(Faber) Becoming God's Children - Religion's Infantilizing Process

BECOMING GOD’S CHILDREN
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BECOMING GOD’S CHILDREN
Religion’s Infantilizing Process
M. D. Faber
Copyright 2010 by M. D. Faber
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Faber, M. D. (Mel D.)
Becoming God’s children : religion’s infantilizing process / M.D. Faber.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–313–38226–0 (hard copy : alk. paper) – ISBN 978–0–313–38227–7 (ebook)
1. Christianity—Psychology. 2. Christianity—Controversial literature. 3. Emotional maturity—
Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.
BR110.F33 2010
261.5´15—dc22 2009050949
ISBN: 978–0–313–38226–0
EISBN: 978–0–313–38227–7
14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
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For Erin Faber
Contents
Preface ix
Chapter One Introduction to the Issue of Infantilization 1
Chapter Two The Developmental Context: Psychology, 19
Neurology, and Magic
Chapter Three 73
Part One The Infantilizing Process 73
Part Two Tracking the Parent-God: The Pastoral Metaphor 139
Chapter Four Growing Up: A Concluding Word 191
Index 199
Preface
What follows is the culmination of an inquiry undertaken some 15 years ago

when I found myself drawn to the psychology of religion (mainly the
occidental creeds) as well as to the psychology of what was then called the
New Age (shamanism, channeling, witchcraft, psychic healing, among
others). My journey led to the writing of several books, two of which obliged
me to pay close attention to the particulars of Christian doctrine and rite.
Although I wasn’t concentrating specifically on Christianity in these works,
I was learning a good deal about it. Eventually I realized that I had reached
conclusions on the nature of the Christian faith sufficient to guide me, and
hopefully the reader, toward a better understanding of the alleged supernatu-
ral realm. Permit me to emphasize that my aim here is not to pick on Chris-
tianity but to conclude a project on the psychology of religion that turned out
to be a central, defining task of my working (or writing) life. Christianity for
me discloses fundamental information on the whys and wherefores of the
willingness among people everywhere not merely to believe in a supernatural
domain but to give the very direction of their lives over to invisible spirits,
including above all, for Christians, the Holy Spirit or, as many Christians
used to say, the Holy Ghost. I would like to think that the reader keeps in
mind as he or she moves through the text both the underlying nature of cur-
rent Christian theology and the underlying nature of the human animal that
invented the world’s supernatural creeds in the first place.
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my gratitude to the staff of the library at the University of
California, Irvine, for assisting me in a variety of ways as I strove to complete
the project. I want also to thank Jack Rattelman for his many valuable com-
ments on the analysis as it began to take shape in earnest. Finally, I must com-
mend Ms. Jaina Kennedy for her splendid preparation of a manuscript that
was not always easy to decipher, and Ms. Diana Marsan for her outstanding
editorial assistance.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to the Issue
of Infantilization
Thematic Vignettes
Dressed entirely in white and kneeling solemnly before the administering
priest, a young male stockbroker in Manhattan is undergoing the rite of Holy
Baptism. ‘‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit,’’ pronounces the cleric as he pours water three times over the
candidate’s head. Shortly thereafter, the priest anoints the supplicant with
sacred chrism, a perfumed oil consecrated by the bishop and signifying the
gift of the Holy Spirit to the newly baptized one who is now, officially, free
of sin and reborn as a child of God. ‘‘Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration
through water in the Word,’’ says the priest as the ceremony draws to a close.
‘‘It is the basis of the whole Christian life.’’1 Glowing with the completion of
the rite as he turns to family and friends, the young stockbroker thinks to
himself, ‘‘I’m reborn, actually reborn! My life is commencing all over again,
through Christ!’’ Glancing at his father and mother specifically, he feels
a bit confused as he recalls the Biblical injunction that he is now obliged
to love Jesus more than he loves his own biological parents (Matt. 10:37).2
He resolves to ask a priest about that in the coming weeks.
~
Sitting silently in a pew of Toronto’s Episcopal Church of St. Luke, a
middle-aged schoolteacher prays ardently for the recovery of her young
grandson who has been seriously injured in an automobile accident. ‘‘Dear
Lord,’’ she says inwardly, addressing an all-powerful Deity whom she
alternately calls her Father, ‘‘grant Your healing energies to this boy, so that
he may recover and live a full, rewarding life.’’ She goes on, ‘‘I ask You this
submissively, humbly, helplessly, as I depend fully upon Your goodness and
mercy, upon Your unconditional love for all Your children, and I beseech
2 Becoming God’s Children
You faithfully in the name of Your only begotten Son, Christ Jesus. It is
written in Your Book, Father, that if I ask I shall receive. Please, let it be so.’’
A moment later as the woman exits the church and makes her way to the
nearby hospital where her grandson lies injured, she experiences the sweet,
unmistakable sensation of having ‘‘made contact.’’ She can feel the Lord
manifesting His divine presence within her through the working of the
Holy Spirit. ‘‘He’s there,’’ she remarks to herself. ‘‘He’s heard my prayer.’’
~
Strolling tranquilly through her sunny backyard located in a suburb of
Kansas City, Missouri, a young housewife and mother of three dwells in her
mind on the lovely old hymn she sang in church the previous Sunday.
I walk through the garden alone

When the dew is still on the roses,
she warbles softly to herself,
And the voice I hear

Falling on my ear,
The Son of God is calling.
And then, savoring the famous refrain she liltingly renders,
And He walks with me

And He talks with me
And He tells me I am His own.
And the joy we share
As we tarry there
None other has ever known.3
‘‘How beautiful are these words,’’ she thinks to herself. ‘‘And how true! How
often have I heard the Lord Jesus calling to me; how often have I felt I was walk-
ing with Him, talking with Him, listening to Him as He told me I belonged to
Him.’’ Her radiant feelings of closeness and security, of connection and love,
remain with her during the next few hours as she goes about her daily chores.
~
Ensconced within a chapel of Paris’s colossal Cathedral of Notre Dame
(Our Lady), an elderly, retired French physician is about to experience Holy
Communion, a religious ceremony in which he has participated many, many
Introduction to the Issue of Infantilization 3
times during the course of his long life. He is not alone. Kneeling with a dozen
other worshipers who have come to receive the holy sacraments, he listens
attentively as the priest gives thanks to the Father, through Christ, in the Holy
Spirit, for all His works: creation, redemption, and sanctification. He listens as
the priest proceeds to ask the Father to send his Holy Spirit onto the bread and
the wine so that they may become, actually become, the body and the blood of
Jesus Christ. As the priest raises the Host aloft while reciting the Lord’s Prayer,
our elderly communicant awaits patiently his turn to take the body of his God
into his mouth and swallow Him down into his stomach. Walking along the
banks of the Seine later in the day, the good doctor reminds himself theologi-
cally that he now has within his own body the body of another Person/God,
namely, Jesus who became a person 2,000 years earlier and also that he is
now in the body of another person; he is now in Christ just as Christ is within
him. The divine, mysterious relationship fostered by the Eucharist is fully
reciprocal, a two-way street doctrinally. In addition, he calls to mind the
familial relationship he enjoys with all those who have taken the Person/God
into their bodies, with all those who participate in the Christian family,
in the Christian Church, his spiritual ‘‘mother’’ who embraces him as Her
own, according to the Catechism that resides upon his bookshelf at home.
Resonating emotionally with all these spiritual affiliations and unions, he feels
well prepared for another week of retirement in his beloved Paris.
~
‘‘Just do it, just take a deep breath and do it,’’ a young businessman is
instructed by a Leader in Van Nuys, California, as he struggles to speak in
tongues for the first time. He is sitting in a Pentecostal Church that has among
its congregation several individuals of both sexes who possess and who mani-
fest this gift of the Holy Spirit. Finally, after considerable encouragement,
and assurances that his successful performance of this phenomenon will bring
him powerful feelings of blessedness, the young businessman holds forth:
‘‘aish nay gum nay tayo,’’ he pronounces, and then again, ‘‘aish nay gum nay
tayo.’’ That’s all he has to offer on this, his first successful try. ‘‘Thank you,
Lord, thank you,’’ cries the Leader, with his hands still upon the head of the
novice who is now weeping openly and joyously as he feels God’s Holy Spirit
coursing electrically through his body and his mind. Receiving the congratu-
lations of his fellow worshipers, three of whom practice glossolalia themselves,
he can hardly wait to get home and break the wonderful news to his wife.
‘‘This is the best I’ve felt in all my 25 years,’’ he thinks to himself.
~
Reclining in his study one tranquil Sunday evening in October, the pastor
of a small Methodist church in southern England ruminates feelingly on the
loss of his elderly mother to cancer one year earlier. They were very close,
and the pastor sometimes misses his mother deeply. Yet always, at some point in
his ruminations, he reminds himself consolingly that he will see her again,
indeed hold her in his arms again in heaven—God willing of course. The pastor
imagines the next world in the classical late Victorian and early modern
fashion. Families parted by death are reunited in the presence of Christ, as
the omnipotent Almighty looks on from the highest spiritual plane. Within
the pastor’s paradise, there is no toil, no striving, no obligation, no ‘‘progress’’
in an earthly sense, but only beatific visions, mystical light, and robed angels
singing eternal praise while loved ones luxuriate in their togetherness. The pas-
tor glances over to the etching on his writing desk wherein he and his beloved
mother hold each other’s hand and face the rising sun. ‘‘Death, where is thy
sting,’’ the man thinks passionately to himself. His eye then moves to a large,
hardbound volume that recently arrived in the mail and that bears the title
Mapping Paradise. It comprises a history of earthly paradise, starting with
the early Christian era and continuing to the present day. Lavishly illustrated,
it indicates the extent to which humanity has always longed for a paradise on
earth, for a place of emotional and physical perfection in the here and now as
opposed to the eternal hereafter.4 Resolving to peruse this fascinating volume
during the next few weeks, the pastor nods off, with visions of his departed
mother still flickering somewhere in his mind.
Psychological Inquiries
I begin with these vignettes in an effort to indicate in a lively, compelling
way several of the major topics on which I plan to concentrate here. Most
broadly, what are these people doing? What are the mental and emotional
processes, the mental and emotional aims, that inform their behavior? Why
would someone who has already been born and parented seek to be reborn
ritualistically as the child of an invisible god whom he regards explicitly as
his father, or if he follows the New Testament closely, as his ‘‘Abba’’ or
‘‘daddy’’ (Romans 8:15)? Why does Christianity consider this transforma-
tional baptismal rite to be ‘‘the basis of the whole Christian life?’’5 Again,
what are Christians doing when they pray, and how are they instructed to
go about the business by their theological mentors? When Friedrich Heiler
asserts in his classic study of supplication, Prayer, that Christians are expected
to adopt a ‘‘dependent, child-like’’ attitude as they turn to the Almighty, is he
reflecting the universal or orthodox position on the matter?6 Are Christians
always expected to pray as ‘‘little children’’? If so, why? What does it mean to
claim that a ‘‘Holy Spirit’’ mediates the communication between the earthly
prayer and the supernatural deity who presumably hears and answers? What
is the Holy Spirit anyway? When people assert that they ‘‘feel’’ its ‘‘presence,’’
what do they feel? What constitutes its presence? When a Christian hymn
suggests that Jesus’s ‘‘voice’’ finds its way to the worshiper’s ‘‘ear,’’ that Jesus
‘‘calls’’ upon His followers to ‘‘walk’’ with Him and to ‘‘talk’’ with Him, do
the lyrics imply that worshipers actually hear Jesus’s voice, actually experience
walking and talking with their Savior?
Why would anyone want to eat the body of Jesus, or drink the man’s
blood? Remember, Jesus was an actual person when He walked on earth,
and it is the actual person, Jesus, whom billions of earthly communicants
consume when they participate in the Eucharist. Jesus also was, and is, a
God of course, and the notion of Godhead is always firmly tied to the ritual.
But worshipers don’t consume a Godhead; they consume the sacrificial
Redeemer of the fallen human race, the Lamb of God. Permit me to ask
again, why do they wish to do this? Surely such behavior invites close psycho-
logical scrutiny. Were we to visit some faraway island in some faraway ocean
and find ourselves invited to eat the body of a god in the form of, say, a
coconut, we would instantly put on our thinking caps and ask ourselves,
what’s going on? Somewhere in our minds might lurk the words ‘‘magic’’
or ‘‘mumbo jumbo.’’ We would strive to explain both conduct and myth
as inseparable facets of a peculiar cultural enactment. Why would we not
do the same for the Eucharist? Were we to exempt it from such scrutiny,
would we not be indulging ourselves in the ‘‘us and them’’ kind of thinking
that characterizes former eras, the colonial, Victorian period, for example,
when the ‘‘savages’’ ate the gods and the Christians participated in the
sacred traditions of the church? Eating a god’s body is exactly that whether
one is naked and painted or wearing a business suit. Might the answer to
the question, why do Christians wish to consume Jesus Christ? reside in
the orthodox claim that such consumption triggers an actual, inward, sym-
biotic union between communicant and salvational presence? Those who
swallow Christ immediately dwell in Christ, and Christ as swallowed
immediately dwells in them. Moreover, one’s feeling of being in Christ
and of having Christ inside one is linked theologically to the Holy Spirit
that has descended transformationally on the bread and the wine and thus
awakened the worshiper’s capacity to apprehend God’s presence as the ritual
unfolds. Accordingly, might the psychological nature of the Holy Spirit
have everything to do with the feelings people experience as they participate
in certain magical acts and nothing to do with the putative supernatural
realm? When we further consider this rite in relation to baptism that is

also tied inextricably to the Holy Spirit, we realize that one’s spiritual
rebirth, or the emergence of the ‘‘new Adam’’ from the navel of the Church,
leads directly to the baptized Christian’s reentry into the body of his divine
Creator! One comes out anew in order to go back in! Even those baptized
Christians who don’t partake in the Eucharist believe themselves to be
dwelling in Christ in some ‘‘spiritual,’’ doctrinal sense. All this may suggest
in a preliminary way that Christianity’s chief aim and purpose is to bring
about the union of humanity and God, or to express it alternatively, to end
the separation of humanity and God that characterizes our ordinary, mortal,
fallen, tragic condition as inhabitants of the planet. It’s hard to feel separate
when one is walking around in the body of Christ, or walking around with
Christ in one’s belly.
How does something as strange, indeed as bizarre as glossolalia, or speak-
ing in tongues, find its way into one of humankind’s major religions, a creed
that harbors for billions of people the essence of reality? True, glossolalia has
become a controversial topic among Christians during the past 50 or 60 years,
yet it is doctrinally encouraged and practiced in Pentecostal and other
churches throughout the world, including, of course, the United States where
it currently enjoys widespread popularity.7 What are its origins in Scripture,
and, in particular, what do those origins suggest to us about the underlying
psychological nature of the Holy Spirit? According to Pentecostal tradition,
it is the Holy Spirit specifically that provides the practitioner with his amazing
gift, with his ability to speak in tongues.
Eternal salvation through the Trinity, through the sacrifice of Christ,
through baptismal and Eucharistic rites, through faith as it manifests itself
in prayer, through the gift of transformational grace, and through other
aspects of the Christian framework as it expresses itself on a vast, global scale,
removes or at least diminishes adaptively humankind’s primal, instinctual fear
of death, the termination of one’s existence, the dreaded, inevitable end.
Writing vividly of the ‘‘profound aversion towards non-existence’’ that resides
in people generally, Corliss Lamont comments,
To try to realize that when once we close our eyes in death, we shall never, never
open them again on any happy or absorbing scene, that this pleasant earth will
roll on and on for ages with ourselves no more sensible of what transpires than a
dull clod, that this brief and flickering and bittersweet life is our only glimpse,
our only taste, of existence throughout the billions of infinities of unending
time—to try to realize this, even to phrase such thoughts, can occasion a black,
sinking spell along the pathways of sensation.8
Who would disagree? But death as human creatures perceive it, feel it, appre-
hend it developmentally and psychodynamically constitutes not only naught-
ment, nothingness, emptiness; it also constitutes a traumatic separation from
the self and from others, both as the self extends into others and as others
are internalized into the self along the way, from the inception of one’s days.
Accordingly, heavenly salvation for Christians is usually social in nature and
tied conceptually to reunion with those they love, those upon whom they
emotionally depend.9 And in this, it harmonizes perfectly with the central
enactments and symbolic representations of the creed, with baptism that
rebirths the believer into eternal union with a loving, unchanging, parental
Deity; with the Eucharist that positions the believer within the body of Christ;
with prayer that ties the believer to the Parent-God through the workings of
the Holy Spirit; with the archetypal view of the Church as mother and womb;
with the congregation of worshipers as family, as brothers and sisters; and on
and on it goes with dozens of related items and nuances. The whole religion
is a complex, magical system for attaching people to other people (‘‘love one
another’’) and to a triune supernatural entity, the Trinity, from Whom the
believer will never be parted (Rom. 8:39). It can hardly come as a surprise,
then, that Christianity’s version of terrestrial paradise, the prelapsarian
Garden, the proverbial heaven on earth, is one in which there is no death,
no separation crisis of mortality, for it is death precisely that humankind’s
parents, Adam and Eve, bring into the world when they transform themselves
from innocent, obedient children of God into rebellious knowledge-seekers,
lapsed immortals who deserve exactly what God gives them, expulsion from
the Garden, the world’s navel, the maternal matrix, an expulsion that renders
mythically our original ‘‘birth’’ as mortals. A fundamental aim of Christianity,
as every Christian knows, is restoring the fallen progeny of Adam and
Eve (all human beings) to their salvational status through the mercies of
Jesus Christ, the worshiper’s heavenly protector and guide. Eternal salvation
is ultimately rescue from the crisis of eternal separation.
Methods and Theses

I intend in what follows to develop these and other ideas within a broad
naturalistic framework informed by psychological, neurological, cognitional,
anthropological, and evolutional perspectives—a multifaceted, eclectic
approach that sets aside entirely any and all appeals to the supernatural
realm, divine mystery, the intuitive unseen, sacred inspiration, and all the
rest of it. Naturalism is defined as a theory denying that an object or event
has a supernatural significance and suggesting that scientific laws are
adequate to account for all phenomena. There is not, in my view, one single
aspect of Christianity or any other religion, not one, that cannot be fully
and satisfactorily explained along purely naturalistic lines. Note the empha-
sis on explanation. Although I consider religious supernaturalism, whatever
soothing, adaptive potential it may possess, to be a distortion of reality,
an erroneous and regrettable perception of the world around us, I am deter-
mined to subordinate polemics to what I hope is clear, cogent, naturalistic
analysis, the kind that persuades through painstaking empirical procedure
as opposed to rhetorical passion. If readers choose to finish the book, they
can simply make up their minds at the end whether or not the explanation
I offer is convincing.
As for my presentation of Christian beliefs and practices, my sources of
information on the creed, I plan to rely heavily on what Christians are cur-
rently writing and thinking, the books, pamphlets, prayers, hymns, devotion-
als, television shows, and conversations that make up the current ‘‘scene,’’ or
again in the vernacular, ‘‘what’s out there right now.’’ Why am I doing this?
During the period in which I prepared myself for the writing of this book,
I realized more and more deeply that the living Christian religion was speaking
to me vividly, directly, through its present popular expression, through the
work of Billy Graham and his daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, through Robert
H. Schuller and Henry Cloud and Neil T. Anderson, through collections of
Christian prayers and hymns, through pamphlets such as Our Daily Bread,
through Christian television channels and the remarks of Christian men
and women whose immediate, daily lives were inextricably bound up with
their spiritual beliefs. Of course I had to focus persistently on the New
Testament, and I had to pay some attention to Augustine and Martin Luther,
to Thomas Merton and to the Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, and to
many other classical, authoritative, erudite productions past and present. But
were sources such as these to dominate my discussion, the reader might never
hear the voice of Christianity today, the urgent expression of contemporary
people as they revealed their hopes and fears, their wishes and convictions,
in simple, straightforward, and often passionate language to those who were
reading or listening intently, with pressing emotional agendas of their own.
I wanted to capture this accent, this contemporary slant, and I came to
believe that the psychological essence of Christianity might emerge very
nicely, perhaps unforgettably, if the reader were encouraged to detect that
accent, that slant, as he or she moved through the text. Does this mean that
I plan to subordinate the manifold historical variations and issues on the
nature of Christianity as an unfolding religion to a presentation of the creed
as we discover it today in our own Western culture? Yes, it does: that’s exactly
the kind of book I’m writing. But let me be more specific about the natural-
istic approach I mean to take.
A multilayered, multifaceted system of magical behavior, Christianity as
theology and rite is designed to accomplish nothing less than the veiling, or
perhaps the removal, of our chief biological tormentors, namely, separation,
smallness (or vulnerability), and death, and replace them with a perfectionist
scheme whereby the believer enjoys loving union with a Parent-God from
Whom he will never be parted, protection and empowerment through a
Parent-God Whose omnipotence flows toward His dutiful followers, and
immortality or an escape from death through Jesus Christ’s sacrificial gift,
freely offered to all those who turn to Him sincerely and ask. For everyone
who cries out, ‘‘Save me, Jesus,’’ the Lord will stand biological reality on
its head and furnish the believer with a full-fledged alternate identity to
replace the flawed or imperfect one he or she possesses by virtue of what
the Bible terms ‘‘the Fall.’’ These are the wishful notions that reside at the
core of the creed, the ideas that fuel its theological, ritualistic engine, that
drive its transformational agenda, that convince its devotees to declare both
inwardly and aloud, ‘‘I believe.’’
The magical system is rooted overwhelmingly in memory, particularly
unconscious memory, or implicit memory, or affective memory—felt as
opposed to explicitly recalled, and jogged, or awakened, by a wide variety of
retrieval cues embedded in Christian rite and doctrine, in the magical, reli-
gious happenings in which the worshiper is invited to participate as he actu-
alizes his life as a devotee of the tripartite theological model, namely, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. In this way, the psychological significance of Christianity
is tied inextricably to specific neurological events occurring in the hippocam-
pal, limbic, and amygdalic regions of the brain, as well as in the cortex, or
frontal lobes, the area from which emanates the believer’s rationalization,
the ‘‘intellectual’’ or ‘‘cognitive’’ assent that allows the creed’s supernatural
framework, its inventive, imaginal claims (heaven, hell, angels, devils, and
spirits of all kinds including the tripartite Godhead) to ring true. This is
but another way of saying that the worshiper’s whole brain, both conscious
and unconscious, carries the perceptual weight of the religion’s magical
goings—on the final goal of which is to infantilize the participant, to restore
him mnemonically and transformationally to an idealized version of his
own biological beginnings, to the period in which he was secure in the protec-
tive, loving, salvational care of a big one, a parental shepherd after whom he
followed like a bleating lamb for several crucial years. The magical steps of
the infantilizing process that engenders the worshiper’s alternative identity,
the counterweight to his biological being, are clear, and I will examine each
of them at some length: baptism, prayer, the Eucharist, moment-to-moment

dependency on the Lord, the key New Testamental metaphors of Vine and
Shepherd, obedience, glossolalia as a specialized expression of infantilization,
and a number of others. If all goes well for the metamorphosed worshiper, he
will, in a central part of himself, wake up as the new Adam (Col. 3:10),
united inextricably with his supernatural Guide, the Big One Who leads
him around every step of the way and Who saves him from extinction, from
death, the ultimate separation and terror.
Let’s bear in mind as we go that Christianity’s reliance on the actual infancy
and childhood of every believer or potential believer does not suggest that
perfect or even overwhelmingly happy beginnings must undergird the reli-
gion’s infantilizing tactics. To accomplish all its magical purposes, and
thereby infantilize all its devotees, Christianity requires only ‘‘good enough’’
beginnings,10 infancies and childhoods that contain for the most part normal
interactional experience good enough to be idealized into the wondrous figures
it offers the multitudes: the beneficent, mighty Father, the Parent-God; Jesus,
the loving Shepherd and selfless Savior of humanity; Mary, the tender
mother; the Holy Spirit Who guides the mortal heart toward the immortal
Deity. The vast majority of humans with their ‘‘good enough’’ beginnings
have no trouble at all recognizing and responding to these perfectionist enti-
ties. Even those unfortunates whose opening years are streaked with serious
parental shortcomings can usually get there. It is only the very deeply dis-
turbed, the severely neglected and abused, who are apt to be entirely shut
out, and even among these tormented people miracles of grace are by no
means unknown. Why do I stress this? I stress it because the Holy Spirit
whose working within the worshiper establishes the veracity of the religion’s
doctrine and rite turns out in the final analysis to be nothing more nor less
than the worshiper’s implicit recollection of his own biological experience in
the world.11 Let’s explore this a little further in a preliminary way that will
prepare us for the full-scale discussion that occurs later on.
According to Christianity’s orthodox view, the truth of the Word suffuses
the seeker when and only when the Holy Spirit descends into his heart and
mind. Yet how this transpires, precisely, is for all Christians a profound, even
divine mystery, the wonder and the glory of the creed. Let’s make up a typical
instance as follows: a lukewarm practitioner suddenly discovers himself
inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ as they emerge from New Testamen-
tal passages. After years of floundering about, he feels deep within himself
reborn, galvanized, awakened to the scope and significance of Christianity’s
‘‘good news,’’ or ‘‘Gospel.’’ How has this come to pass? The best one can do
as a Christian is attribute the whole business to the workings of the Holy
Spirit, or the Spirit-Person who miraculously finds Its/His way into the life of
the quondam lukewarm practitioner. The putative ‘‘mystery’’ or ‘‘miracle of
grace,’’ however, resides ultimately within the nature of implicit recollection:
the worshiper cannot see what is occurring in his own mind-brain as a
retrieval cue whose provenance is some particular facet of Christian rite and
doctrine (baptism, prayer, the Eucharist, the metaphor of Vine or Shepherd,
or a dozen other related features of creedal literature and practice) awakens a
particular aspect of his own biological beginnings and thus infuses into his
present existence the affective charge of his foundational past. Remember,
every major aspect of Christianity as a whole is devoted to transforming the
worshiper into a ‘‘little child’’ of the Lord: ‘‘Verily I say unto you, Except ye
be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the king-
dom of heaven’’ (Matt. 18.3). When the Holy Spirit reaches the Christian
seeker, it is always in this infantilizing context. Indeed, the infantilizing con-
text is there in the first place to facilitate the Holy Spirit’s transformational
workings in the one who craves a ‘‘salvation’’ that turns out to be nothing
other than union with the Parent-God, existing in the gravitational orbit of
the Big One, following after the sacred Shepherd, depending entirely on the
protection and love of the Lord—in short, rediscovering an idealized version
of exactly the kind of symbiotic relationship one enjoyed during the early
period as a little one, a ‘‘little child’’ in the care of a loving parent. Accord-
ingly, the Holy Spirit is a ‘‘mystery’’ only to those who fail to discern how
the human mind-brain works in specific ideational contexts. When the accent
of consciousness is on a wishful reversion to childhood, the whole mind-brain
will follow that accent.
I’m not suggesting, of course, that the whole of Christianity as it manifests
itself within a given social order boils down to the process of infantilization
that I’m after here. As a full-fledged socioreligious institution, Christianity is
busily involved in education, child care, medical services, charity, counseling,
camping, and a dozen other worthwhile pursuits that engage people at every
level and at every age. One has merely to look around to discern this. I’m sug-
gesting only that Christianity in its theological, doctrinal, ritualistic hearts of
hearts—Christianity as we discover it in the New Testament, on the devo-
tional Christian television channels, and in the theological writings and pro-
nouncements of it sources and purveyors from the Catechism of the Catholic
Church to the myriad inspirational books and pamphlets on the shelf in libra-
ries, bookshops, and in places of worship—Christianity as religion, in short, is
dedicated overwhelmingly, one might even say entirely, to the intellectual,
emotional, and psychological infantilization of all those who turn to it, follow
it, subscribe to it for what we commonly think of as ‘‘spiritual’’ reasons.
The reader may well be thinking in the face of that last sentence, hold it!
You’re reducing complex, variegated theological rites and teachings to a
monolithic psychological/neurological analysis, a theoretical view that picks
and chooses in a manner that supports its own predetermined conclusions.
What fits your notion you seize upon. What doesn’t fit, however significant
it may ultimately be, you simply ignore. My full response to such objections
will be the substance of this book as a whole, of course. But I will say here,
very briefly, that the charge of reductionism in the specific context of Chris-
tianity as an infantilizing process will not hold and should be dropped. There
is just too much supportive material in the major presentational sources
of the religion, in the New Testament, in the popular media, and in the
enormous, even endless Christian literature that we find everywhere around
us, to miss the overwhelming emphasis upon infantilizing the worshiper,
upon transforming him or her into an utterly dependent, utterly submissive,
utterly obedient ‘‘little child’’ following after the explicitly parental figures
of the Almighty Lord and His pastoral Son from Whom he or she continu-
ously seeks provision and protection through prayer. As I just suggested, the
reader will have to wait for the book’s central chapter to appreciate all this
thoroughly, but I want the reader to know right now that I’ve not only con-
sidered the issue of reductionism every step of the way but found myself
amazed again and again at the extent to which the Christian religion is
dedicated to infantilization as the main component of its transformational,
salvational scheme.
Cultic Christianity
The presentation of Jesus in the New Testament is, of course, multidimen-
sional. We find acts of kindness, of mercy, of concern; we find firmness and
authority; we find humility and self-effacement; and we find the ability to sus-
pend the laws of nature, to perform miracles, to walk on water, to heal the sick,
to rise up from the grave. Finally, we find the willingness for supreme self-
sacrifice, limitless service unto others, even to the Cross itself. It is an arresting,
unforgettable portraiture, and its influence upon the development of Western
culture is immeasurable.12 However, from the standpoint of strictly naturalis-
tic, psychological investigation, the standpoint to which I’ve committed
myself unreservedly here, we also find in the depiction of Jesus the familiar
outlines of the cult leader, the self-absorbed, narcissistic personality with the
charismatic, problematical power to work His will upon the gullible, malle-
able followers who find their lives turned upside down as they fall under His
influence, His spell. Karen Armstrong, writing on the origins of Christianity
in her recent volume The Great Transformation, bluntly describes Jesus for her
readership as ‘‘a Galilean faith-healer.’’13 While Armstrong’s words take us in
the right direction, they ultimately fall short of the mark. We have in Jesus
an individual whose assumptive healing capacities are only a tiny segment of
the extraordinary, astonishing nature He claims for Himself.
Jesus goes about in the belief that He’s divine, a kind of god, the promised
Messiah of Jewish Scriptural tradition, in direct, immediate contact with
mighty supernatural powers. As the be-all and end-all of the world, which
revolves around Him, He lays down the law, or perhaps I should say gives
marching orders, to the mere mortals with whom He interacts. They are to
do whatever He says and to center their lives on His purposes:
And Jesus came and spoke unto them saying, All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you
always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
(Matt. 28:18–20)
Seldom does the word Amen so transparently mean what it means in

the Hebrew and Greek: so be it. Clearly, Jesus seeks total control not only
over the gathering band of ‘‘worshipers’’ who are already hugging his ‘‘feet’’
(Matt. 28:9); He seeks total control over the whole world, ‘‘all nations’’ as
He puts it. Everyone, period, will do ‘‘whatsoever’’ He ‘‘commands.’’ Every-
one will be ‘‘baptized.’’ Everyone will ‘‘observe’’ all the ‘‘things’’ He wishes
them to ‘‘observe.’’ The very meaning of life, even life itself, will come to be
equated with Him. His ideal disciple will have no other focus in his earthly exis-
tence besides Jesus. It will be Jesus coming, Jesus going, Jesus all the time. As His
chief orthodox proselytizer, Paul, puts it in his Epistle to the Philippians (1:21),
‘‘For to me [,] to live is Christ.’’ This, then, is what Jesus covets: the utter absorp-
tion of others (everyone) in His grand, global design.
As for followers, Jesus has a gift for recruiting them, lots of them, in fact, as
all successful cult leaders do. Here are the relevant passages from the New
Testament:
And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter,
and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he
saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they
straightway left their nets, and followed him. And going on from thence,
he saw two other brethren, James the son of Zeb´-e-dee, and John his brother,
in a ship with Zeb´-e-dee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.
And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him. And
Jesus went about all Galilee . . . And his fame went throughout all Syria . . .
And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from
Decapolis, and from Jerusalem. . . .
(Matt. 4:18–25)
Once under his spell, Jesus makes it very clear to His devotees that He is now
the Shepherd and they the sheep: ‘‘I am the good shepherd . . . My sheep hear
my voice, and I know them, and they follow me’’ (John 10:11,27). But the
members of the flock do not merely owe Him their absolute allegiance.
As I noted on the first page of this book, they must substitute Him for their
own real mothers and fathers. They must ‘‘love’’ Him more than their own
parents, and if they are parents, they must love Him more than their
own children:
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that
loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh
not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me.
(Matt. 10:37–38)
Jesus declares in effect that He’s the crucial one, not the parent or the child.
Thus ideally His worshipers, His ‘‘sheep,’’ will ‘‘follow after’’ Him at once, at
that very moment, as James and John do earlier. A father such as Zeb´-e-dee
is simply left holding the bag, or, as in this case, his tattered fishing nets.
So much for familial cohesion, familial loyalty, familial order.
Surely at this juncture the reader is beginning to recognize the alarming,
cultic scenario with which he or she is doubtless already familiar in his or
her own troubled, modern society: a grandiose, charismatic individual leads
a band of simple, credulous followers (‘‘fishers’’) into a religious scheme for
changing the world, a scheme that has at its center, of course, the grandiose,
charismatic individual himself. What the Romans finally did to Jesus was
barbaric and disgusting, but let’s face it, they had a very good sense of who
He was and what He was up to. The Roman Empire during this period was rife
with potentially disruptive sects and cults that required constant monitoring
and in certain instances immediate suppression lest Roman rule be compro-
mised. As in our own world today, those who have the power, be they gover-
nors, industrialists, or popes, do not want to see it eroded, even a little bit.
Are we not all sinners?
That Christianity commenced its life as a breakaway Jewish sect with Jesus
as the long-awaited Messiah, then gradually metamorphosed into a sizable
cult as followers from several non-Jewish traditions began to join in, is the
most widely accepted version of its beginnings.14 Let’s take a moment to

imagine the faithful gathering for worship down in the catacombs during
the time of Roman persecution (late second century). With a couple of flick-
ering torches fighting the eerie darkness, the priestly leader of the rites is
pouring water over the head of a recent convert and announcing from an altar
of stone that the newcomer is now reborn on the spiritual plane as a ‘‘little
child’’ of Jesus Christ. Certain members of the group abruptly cry out that
they can feel a Holy Spirit descending upon them in the tombs. ‘‘He’s here,’’
they shout; ‘‘He’s moving among us.’’ Several participants start looking over
their shoulders with wide eyes. A few moments later, the leader holds up a
loaf of bread and a vessel of wine, asserting that the words he is about to utter
will transform these common substances into the flesh and blood of a super-
natural Deity who once walked the earth as a man. The sacred words having
been pronounced, the attendees one and all masticate the body and drink
down the blood of their God, declaring their blessedness at having Him
inside. For some, the feast is joyously transportive: they exult at being merged
with their loving provider. Others weep openly as they contemplate their
Redeemer’s ultimate sacrifice. Still others drift off into trance states mum-
bling their favorite prayers of adoration and thanksgiving. When noises are
suddenly detected elsewhere in the passageways, everyone falls silent. Roman
soldiers may well be about, and that, of course, means trouble. To imagine all
this, to see it freshly, unexpectedly, out of the blue as it were, is to be struck at
once by its cultic, magic nature. If ever conjurations were enacted on this
planet, we have an instance of them here.15
Having accomplished the long, historical transition from cult to estab-
lished religion, Christianity is currently a part of our social fabric, as familiar
to most of us as the ball game or the movies. Yet at its liturgical, theological
core Christianity today is as cultic, as magical, as counterintuitive and fantas-
tical as it was 2,000 years ago in the catacombs beneath the Appian Way.
If the aim of this volume is the naturalistic demystification of the magical
process as I’ve been indicating from the outset, then we must recognize the
mystification that inheres automatically in the mere presence of Christianity
all around us, all the time. We hear about a child born of a virgin. We hear
about a dead man rising up from the grave. We hear about bread and wine
turning into flesh and blood, about individuals conversing with supernatural
entities, about holy spirits flowing into people’s minds and bodies. We hear
these things, and many more just like them, on the telly, in the office, on
the street—everywhere in short, and we simply continue with our activities
as if such goings-on were no more unusual than making the bed. Someone
tells us that he’s just partaken of a god’s flesh and blood, or received a personal
message from an invisible, three-sided deity, and we say, oh. Vast numbers of
human beings have, of course, been raised with such ideas, and one cannot
exaggerate the impact of early educative experience on young, impressionable
minds, particularly when the education comes from parents, or other figures
of authority who are often distinctively, even sumptuously attired, with
special bonnets, and with grave, weighty expressions on their faces.
The point is, to underscore the cultic nature of Christian theology and rite
is to facilitate our understanding of Christianity’s infantilizing process, for the
aim of all cultic creeds, by which I mean the aim from the top down, is to
establish the cultic leader as the embodiment of all truth and all legitimate
authority, the cultic teachings and rituals as the summation of all worldly
and otherworldly wisdom back to the very beginnings of time, and the cultic
membership as the unquestioning, sheep-like followers of the leader: men,
women, and children who center their lives on the leader and the leader
alone, who look to the leader and only the leader for guidance and protec-
tion—in a word, who become within the constraints of the cultic configura-
tion infantilized human beings upon whom the leader ultimately relies for
the dissemination of his egocentric, grandiose, narcissistic views. When all
is said and done, there is nothing special or even particularly interesting
about cultic Christianity other than the colossal, monumental fact that in
the crapshoot of history it managed somehow to catch on and to steadily
insert itself into the lives and ultimately the traditions of men and women
everywhere. Accordingly, this book on Christianity as infantilization can be
regarded equally as a book on the cultic core, the cultic essence, the cultic
foundation and final nature of the ubiquitous institution that we presently
call the Christian religion.
Notes
1. All the quoted materials in this paragraph are from Joseph Ratzinger, ed.,
Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994),
pp. 312, 317.
2. Throughout this book my scriptural citations are from the King James Version
of the Bible (Philadelphia: National Publishing Co., 1978).
3. This popular Christian song can be discovered in many Christian songbooks.
I found the version I’m using here in Barbara Epp’s article, ‘‘Walking and Talking with
God,’’ http://retirementwithapurpose.com/beprayer1.html (accessed November 2,
2005).
4. Alessandro Scafi, Mapping Paradise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2006).
5. See note 1.
6. See Friedrich Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion
(Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications, [1932] 1997), p. 258.
7. Kimberly Winston writes that ‘‘since the 1960s’’ the practice of glossolalia ‘‘has
leapt from . . . traditionally Pentecostal denominations to mainline Protestant and
Catholic congregations. There are tongue-speaking Methodists, Presbyterians,
Episcopalians, and Catholics.’’ See ‘‘Faith’s Language Barrier?’’USA Today, May 24,
2007, p. 9D.
8. Corliss Lamont, ‘‘The Illusion of Immortality,’’ in Critiques of God, ed. Peter
A. Angeles (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997), pp. 261–89. My citation is
from p. 272.
9. See Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 267–75.
10. The expression ‘‘good enough mothering’’ may be found in D. W. Winnicott,
Playing and Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1971). See pp. 12–14.
11. For the Holy Spirit’s dual nature as both spirit and person, see Billy Graham,
The Holy Spirit (New York: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1978), p. 2. ‘‘The Holy Spirit is
a Person.’’ writes Graham.
12. That Jesus actually existed, that he was a real person as opposed to a mythical
creation, is often debated by scholars and laypersons alike. For a lively recent discus-
sion of the matter, see Patricia Biederman, ‘‘Documentary Questions the Existence
of Jesus,’’ Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2005, p. B2. I personally believe, as do the
vast majority of individuals who have looked into the issue, that Jesus did, in fact,
exist. As for his exact words and actions, we must rely on the New Testament that
was not composed until several decades after His demise. I take the New Testamental
account to be reflective of both the behavior of Jesus and the mind-set of those
who undertook the composition. Accordingly, the New Testament offers us what
we can think of as a truthful narration of the ideational elements that shaped the
Christian religion.
13. Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious
Traditions (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2007), p. 457.
14. See Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 2003), pp. 11–67. See also Paul Johnson, A History
of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), pp. 21–48.
15. Baptism and the Eucharist have been an integral part of Christian worship
since its earliest days.
CHAPTER 2
The Developmental
Context: Psychology,
Neurology, and Magic
If the doctrinal, ritualistic core of Christianity harbors a magical process

of infantilization, as I’ve just suggested and will continue to suggest for
this book’s remainder, then we’d better pay some attention to life’s opening
stages as we’ve come to perceive them in Western culture during the past
few decades, as well as to the underlying nature of magical conduct. More
specifically, the reader will find the lengthy, detailed discussion of Christianity
that comprises Chapter 3 richer and more comprehensible than he might
otherwise find it if he has a solid, introductory notion of the pressing develop-
mental, emotional factors that ultimately catalyze the imaginative creation of a
magical, infantilizing religious system through which worshipers may address
adaptively, or perhaps soothingly, the imperfect, stressful, ‘‘fallen’’ condition in
which they discover themselves upon the planet. The religious world in which
Christians participate is, in the last analysis, a wishful, utopian response to
the daunting realities of our biosocial existence, namely, separation from the
maternal matrix, the narcissistic wound of smallness or vulnerability within
both nature and culture, and finally, of course, our demise and permanent dis-
appearance from the universe, dust to dust.
The Basic Biological Situation

Our human lives are perceptual and emotional continuities. While it is
mistaken to reduce the present to the past, it is also mistaken to divorce the
past from the present. The soil, the ground, from which Christian experience
arises is the early period of our existence in the world, the period during
which the child and the parent are locked in elemental care-giving, care-
receiving interactions, or in what I choose to call henceforth the basic
biological situation. Here are a few specifics. The child is hungry; the child
cries out. Then what happens? The caregiver appears to nourish and to
soothe. The child is frightened; the child cries out. Then what happens?
The caregiver arrives to reassure and to placate. The child is wet and uncom-
fortable; the child cries out. Then what happens? The caregiver appears with
dry garments and ministering hands. The child is injured; the child cries out.
What then? The caregiver comes forward to examine, and kiss, and ‘‘make
better.’’ Over and over again, dozens of times each day, hundreds of times
each week, thousands of times each month, for years, the little one asks and
the big one, the care-giving, all-powerful parent, sees to it that the little one
receives. (The New Testamental formula for the heartfelt prayer that draws
down the Holy Spirit is, ask and ye shall receive [Matt. 7:7].)1 Accordingly,
life’s early stages are characterized by what we can think of as a continuous
biological rhythm of expressive need and timely care, an endless series of cri-
ses and rescues, of asking and receiving, and in every instance it is a helpless,
dependent little one who expresses the need, who does the asking, and it is a
nourishing, succoring, protective big one who performs the requested,
required ministrations. One would be hard-pressed to discover within the
realm of nature another example of physiological and emotional condition-
ing to compare with this one in both depth and duration. Let’s bear in mind
that the basic biological situation is quite literally ‘‘a matter of life and death.’’
The child is utterly dependent upon the all-powerful provider for his or her
very survival. A newly born zebra is up and running (sometimes for its life)
a few minutes after emerging from its mother’s womb; by contrast, the
human infant has no resource but its cry for many, many months after its
appearance on the planet. In this way, what happens early on is destined to
‘‘imprint’’ itself upon the child’s developing brain, to forge permanent, spe-
cialized, synaptic connections at the root of the child’s perceptual existence.
But more of that in a moment.
The little one’s drive, or urge, to attach himself to the parent, indeed to
elicit from the parent his life-giving nourishment, is sustained and strength-
ened by affect, a motive to action that is felt and not merely apprehended
as an end. The basic biological situation is not a mechanical process but a
living, emotional symbiosis streaked with powerful, dynamic feelings in both
directions, with what we generally and informally call ‘‘love,’’ and also with
anxiety because caregiving and care receiving are far from perfect and often
encounter delay and even some sharp dissatisfaction. As it turns out, anxiety,
delay, and dissatisfaction only increase the presence of positive affect as needs
are finally met, provided that discomfort does not become severe or unbear-
able. Thus, the child’s instinctual endowment is not simply linked to affect;
The Developmental Context: Psychology, Neurology, and Magic 21
it is physiologically dependent upon affect for its successful, efficacious

expression. Silvan S. Tomkins puts it this way in his monumental volume,
Affect, Imagery, Consciousness: ‘‘In our view, the primary motivational system
is the affective system, and the biological drives have motivational impact
only when amplified by the affective system.’’2 And again, ‘‘The drive system
is . . . secondary to the affect system. Much of the motivational power of the
drive system is borrowed from the affect system, which is ordinarily activated
concurrently as an amplifier for the drive signal’’ (p. 22). It is affect that
‘‘guarantees’’ the motivational power of drives (p. 24). As human beings,
and from the inception of our lives, we are in the world feelingly, perceive
the world feelingly, interact with others feelingly, and inhabit our minds
and our bodies feelingly. The upshot? There is a tight, dynamic connection
between what Tomkins calls the affect system and the appearance of the
internalized ‘‘presence’’ or ‘‘object’’3 within the individual’s psychological
reality.
As the parent-child relationship develops over time, it is steadily, unremit-
tingly internalized by the growing youngster, not in some vague, metaphori-
cal way, mind you, but emotionally, affectively, organically, even neurally
until it becomes the foundation of his budding perceptual existence. For a
psychological understanding of Christianity, this is of the utmost importance.
The caregiver is taken psychically inside and set up as an internalized pres-
ence, or object, that is integrally connected to, indeed that is inseparable
from, the emerging self. The early interaction becomes imprinted on
the brain. What occurs as little one and big one revolve around each other
like twin stars results in the establishment of actual neural pathways within
the recesses of our chief perceptual organ (Hebb’s famous principle: repeated
behaviors strengthen synaptic connections). When we look within and dis-
cover what we take to be the self, our self, we discover not only a relationship,
we discover not only a oneness that is ultimately a twoness, but we respond
affectively to our inward perception in a manner that mnemonically recalls
(among other things, of course) our early interaction with our primary pro-
vider. This holds for the entire course of our lives. As William Wordsworth
poetically renders the matter in a famous line of verse: ‘‘the child is the father
of the man.’’ Thus, we are physiologically, genetically, normally endowed
with both a capacity and a predisposition to process current information
along neural pathways that harbor our previous experience, including our
experience of the basic biological situation, our experience of being a helpless,
dependent little one in the care and protection of an all-powerful parent.
‘‘We cannot separate our memories of the ongoing events of our lives from
what has happened to us previously,’’ writes Daniel L. Schacter in his celebrated
volume Searching for Memory.4 Daniel J. Siegel expresses it this way in his
equally celebrated book The Developing Mind: ‘‘The mind emerges from the
substance of the brain as it is shaped by interpersonal relationships.’’5 And
again, ‘‘At birth, the infant’s brain is the most undifferentiated organ in the
body. Genes and early experience shape the way neurons connect to one
another and thus form specialized circuits that give rise to mental processes’’
(p. 14). And finally, ‘‘Experiences early in life have a tremendously important
impact on the developing mind’’ (p. 14). The point is, when the Christian
believer suddenly, spontaneously senses the inward or outwardly hovering
presence of an empathetic ‘‘spiritual’’ entity, or when he accedes with strong
emotion to the idea that a benign divinity resides within or watches over
him, he is recontacting, or relocating, the benign internalization, the benign
inward relationship, upon which his life and well-being have been founded.
He makes contact easily with the supernatural domain because in a manner
of speaking he has been there all along. He has been living with or in the com-
pany of powerful, unseen, life-sustaining presences since he commenced the
process of mind-body internalization, of interactional, physiological imprint-
ing, as it naturally and persistently arose from his affective interaction with the
all-powerful provider, the big one who appeared over and over again,
10,000 times, to rescue him from hunger and distress, and to respond to
his emotional and interpersonal needs, to his deep affective drive for attach-
ment. The ‘‘mystery’’ of the indwelling (or suddenly present) Lord has
existed for millennia, and still exists, because individuals are unable to see
and to analyze their early, internalizing, neural development as human
beings, the originative unconscious aspect of themselves that responds
affirmatively, or accedes to, the religious narratives they are offered con-
sciously as the early period gives way to the verbal, symbolic stage of their
lives. Of course the Deity becomes doctrinally complexified (and moralized)
as an individual’s existence develops over time, but the Deity’s naturalistic
origins in human psychobiology are always at the foundation of His living
presence in the world. Arising from the peculiarity of our brain, the super-
natural divine is our peculiar invention.
Implicit Memory, State-Dependent Memory,

and Priming
Here is another decisive, determining point that arises directly from the
context: because we recall unconsciously, or ‘‘implicitly’’ to use the neuro-
psychological term, the early foundational period as we go forward with
our lives, the events of the moment harbor the capacity to arouse early,
internalized materials and the powerful affect that is attached to those materi-
als. As Schacter notes, ‘‘Brain structures that support implicit memory are in
place before the systems needed for explicit memory.’’6 Although implicit
memory ‘‘operates outside our awareness, . . . it is a pervasive influence in all
our lives, and . . . it affects everyday situations’’ (p. 10). Thus, our neuronal,
mental, and emotional makeup predisposes us as perceiving creatures to what
is called in the neuropsychological literature ‘‘mnemonic priming’’ or the
emergence of ‘‘state-dependent’’ memory systems: when temporally disparate
experiences are associated by virtue of similarities between key experiential
elements, the later occurrence is not merely ‘‘colored’’ by the earlier one;
it is interpreted through mnemonic ‘‘feedback loops’’ (or ‘‘engrams’’) that forge
a perceptual connection between present and past events. The state of hunger
in the present triggers unconscious (and perhaps conscious) recollection of
such states as we knew them both three months ago and during the early
phase of our development. Danger signals in the present ‘‘prime’’ us to be on
guard in a manner that reflects the way we reacted to danger in the past, all
the way back to the inception of our experience as people. This is what
we mean by ‘‘the unconscious.’’ As I suggested toward the commencement
of this chapter, our human lives are perceptual and emotional continuities.
‘‘Priming occurs independent of conscious memory,’’ writes Schacter; the
‘‘retrieval cue reinstates or matches the original encoding’’ (pp. 167, 60).
Accordingly, as Siegel observes, ‘‘Our earliest experiences shape our ways of
behaving, including patterns of relating to others, without our ability to recall
consciously when these first learning experiences occurred.’’ We ‘‘act, feel, and
imagine without recognition of the influence of past experience on our present
reality.’’ Studies of ‘‘children and adults suggest that here-and-now perceptual
biases are based on these nonconscious mental models, . . . on what has
occurred in the past.’’7 Emotional events, states Michael S. Gazzaniga in his
recent volume The Ethical Brain, frequently turn into recurring memories at
both the explicit and implicit levels of mnemonic processing. ‘‘Our own
unconscious feelings’’ can ‘‘affect how we encode information and what infor-
mation we retrieve from memory.’’8 Gazzaniga declares in a pivotal remark
that we must bear in mind henceforth, ‘‘Memory is not so much a mechanism
for remembering the past as a means to prepare for the future’’ (p. 141). Now,
as we wed the notions of ‘‘priming’’ and ‘‘state-dependent memory’’ to the
notions of ‘‘internalization’’ and ‘‘neural imprinting,’’ we come to a watershed
in this brief summary of the thesis.
Christian experience thrives upon the triggering of state-dependent
memory, upon the priming of the individual to associate unconsciously his
current experience with the early, life-sustaining, originative experience of
parental ministration and care. Erik H. Erikson expresses it this way in Insight
and Responsibility:
What begins as hope in the individual infant is in its mature form faith, a sense
of superior certainty not essentially dependent upon evidence or reason. . . .
Christianity has shrewdly played into man’s most child-like needs, not only by
offering eternal guarantees for an omniscient power’s benevolence (if properly
appeased) but also by magic words and significant gestures, soothing sounds
and soporific smells—an infant’s world.9
And again, this time from Young Man Luther, Christianity works to gratify
‘‘the simple and fervent wish for a hallucinatory sense of unity with a maternal
matrix’’ (my emphasis).10 We can enrich ‘‘hallucinatory’’ with the notion of
state-dependent memory. However, an individual does not require a formal
religious setting to become ‘‘primed’’ for religious experience. Such priming
frequently occurs as the individual merely deals with the vicissitudes of his
life. Here is a brief, homely example, the sort that turns up routinely in Chris-
tian (and other) bookshops. A young male farmer on foot discovers himself
lost in a ferocious blizzard. Darkness has descended, and the temperature is
falling fast. After wandering fruitlessly about for nearly an hour, the man
panics and then inwardly cries out for divine assistance. A few seconds later,
miraculously, he has the powerful, unmistakable sensation of a benign, pro-
tective presence appearing at his side. (He later refers to this entity as his
guardian angel.) Calmed and reassured, the young farmer trudges on, and
within 10 minutes finds himself upon the old footpath that leads directly to
his farmhouse and his fireplace. He remains convinced to this day that
God, working through the angels, delivered him from a dangerous, perhaps
deadly, situation.11 Surely, the naturalistic explanation of all this is perfectly
clear from the context. An immediate crisis (a state of danger) triggers the
implicit memory of rescue at the hands of a loving provider, perhaps the oldest
and most persistent memory grooved into our brains by our experience in the
world. Indeed, what occurs here is a virtual metaphor of the basic biological
situation itself. The infant is hungry (crisis); the infant cries out (proto-
prayer). Then what happens? The caregiver arrives to nourish and to soothe
(rescue). Because our young farmer cannot grasp the workings of his mind
and emotions, he projectively attributes this simple, natural occurrence to
divine or supernatural sources in keeping with the supernatural narratives
to which he has been exposed. The affective power of unconscious memory,
released by an arresting version of the deep biological past, fosters an unshak-
able, heartfelt belief in the putative supernatural sphere and the succoring,
spiritual denizens thereof.
Dissociation, Infantile Amnesia, and Christianity

Recent clinical work on the psychological state of dissociation enables us
to grasp more fully the distinction between explicit and implicit recollection.
In addition, to focus on dissociation will allow us to appreciate in a prelimi-
nary way the major significance of the following: as human beings none of
us can explicitly recall the crucial, life-shaping events of our preliminary
years, or ages 1–3—a mnemonic incapacity that is known in psychological
circles as infantile amnesia.
Dissociation, observes Gary Whitmer, involves ‘‘those states of simultane-
ous knowing and not knowing’’ in which perceptions are ‘‘accurate and fully
conscious’’ yet ‘‘have no credibility to the subject’’ who not only ‘‘constructs
[his] self-knowledge in interaction with another’’ but ‘‘relegates to another’’
the job of ‘‘interpreting [his] experience.’’ While the subject ‘‘registers’’ his
‘‘sensations,’’ it is the other who ‘‘names’’ and classifies them. In this way,
what the dissociative person recognizes as himself is actually ‘‘determined’’
by another human being.12 Whitmer offers us in illustration a married pro-
fessional patient dubbed Mrs. F who was raped by her father as a child and
who has endeavored to remove herself from the event. During ‘‘moments of
remembering,’’ writes Whitmer, she ‘‘felt herself to be outside her body
in time and space, frightened, and scarcely able to move.’’ She experienced
‘‘a constant struggle’’ to talk about past occurrences that she could not name.
She even suffered from a ‘‘bladder infection’’ that she appeared not to recog-
nize in spite of the constant, considerable pain. Accordingly, Mrs. F was in
a ‘‘state of dissociation.’’ She felt ‘‘like a stranger to herself ’’ as her life took
on a ‘‘me-but-not-me quality’’ (pp. 808–9). The aim of Whitmer’s interven-
tion with Mrs. F, needless to say, is to resolve the ‘‘dissociation,’’ to foster inte-
gration as opposed to inner division, to guide the woman toward a full,
honest knowledge of herself, toward an undistorted, unclouded perception
of her motives and conduct. Whitmer writes that ‘‘dissociation at its core is
an impairment in the subject’s ability to represent his or her own experience’’
(p. 812). If personhood is to be achieved, not merely for this patient but for
people generally, it is the subject and not the other who must serve as the
‘‘interpreter’’ of his existence. We come now to a watershed: there is one time
in our lives when a salubrious self-determination of our experience does not
and cannot occur, when our normal, healthy mental structure depends and
must depend on our relationship with another, and that time is precisely
the early one in which our interactions with the caregiver actually shape,
actually determine, the basic nature of our minds. The first ‘‘self-structure’’
turns out to be ‘‘interpersonal’’ (p. 815).
Whitmer notes that during infancy and early childhood, or ‘‘before the
child understands the representational nature of ideas and feelings,’’ what
the mother presents to her offspring comprises his ‘‘reality.’’ Because the neo-
nate inhabits what is sometimes called the presubjective realm of psychic
equivalency wherein perception and interpretation are ‘‘identical processes’’
and sensorial experience is ‘‘unmediated’’ by cognitional awareness, the
parent or the adult who ‘‘responds to the child’’ provides him with a
‘‘medium’’ in which he can perceive his experiential world ‘‘in tangible form.’’
Thus it is ‘‘the mother’s words, gestures, and emotional expression’’ that guide
the newcomer ‘‘to his own mind.’’ By ‘‘finding an image of himself in his
mother’s mind,’’ by seeing his idea or fantasy represented in the caregiver’s
mentality, the child is able to create and to structure his own thought pro-
cesses, his own selfhood, and to discover his way toward his own unique
participation in the world (pp. 819–20). Obviously this is a crucial, even
dangerous period for the infant-child, one that can lead to perceptual distor-
tion and affective disturbance. But in the vast majority of instances, where
mothering is ‘‘good enough’’ to foster normal development, the early period
provides the budding individual with a secure foundation for his emerging
identity.13 What we must bear in mind above all as we approach Christianity
is that the representation of self and world that emerges here does not com-
prise merely ‘‘one view among many.’’ Rather, the early foundational experi-
ence ‘‘has the impact of singular truth’’ and is adopted by the child as the
very core of the self. The caregiver’s impact on her offspring actually triggers
the sensation of ‘‘me.’’ The child cannot at this stage say to the parent, ‘‘you
misunderstand me’’ because no ‘‘me’’ exists ‘‘apart from the parent’s under-
standing.’’ Thus, the ‘‘reality’’ of the caregiver does not become a ‘‘reality’’
for the child; it becomes the only ‘‘reality,’’ the only ‘‘place’’ in which he has
existence. As for dissociation, it constitutes, as Whitmer sees it, the ‘‘pathologi-
cal form’’ of this presubjective mode of relating to another person (p. 820).
We may begin to grasp in earnest, now, the decisive, all-important role of
infantile amnesia in the onset and advent of Christian conviction. As the
child finds his way toward the supernatural divine, he discovers a sphere that
bears a striking, uncanny resemblance to the experiential world in which he
has been dwelling right along through his presubjective interactions with
the caregiver, the ultimate source of his most persistent and powerful implicit
memories, the ultimate source of his perceptual, affective core, his selfhood,
his psychological structure, his very ‘‘me-ness.’’ To put it another way, the
religious realm into which the child gradually enters mirrors unconsciously,
associatively, perceptually, and affectively, the presubjective ‘‘reality’’ that the
child has been internalizing and installing neurally as the basis of his
gradually emerging identity. The religious realm, in two words, corresponds

implicitly to the child’s mind. It is a realm that contains at its center an invis-
ible parental presence who supports and sustains the child, who gives him his
existence, his being (the ‘‘Creator’’). This is exactly what the child has internal-
ized to this point, as he verges upon his symbolic, verbal representations.
He contains, as microcosm, an invisible, creative, parental presence, or ‘‘object’’
as the psychological lingo has it, that holds him sustainingly in and through a
primal, foundational, structural bond, the rock-like support of the religious
literature, dependable, unfailing, always there. It is a realm that contains an
invisible parental presence who loves the child (the loving Jesus), who grapples
him unto Himself in an affective life-giving, life-enhancing symbiosis. This is
exactly what the child harbors within: the invisible, loving, care-giving presence
of the early period, the one who adored him and whom he adored as only the
gushing, spontaneous infant-child can adore. It is a realm that contains a
powerful, indeed an omnipotent parental figure devoted in large measure to
protecting the child, to shielding him from harm, to ‘‘watching over’’ him.
Again, this is exactly what the child harbors within his developing mind:
an awareness of the parent’s all-powerful, protective presence, the parent’s
capacity to do everything, and, in particular, to do all those things the relatively
helpless child cannot do by himself. Not only has the child internalized such a
one, such a ‘‘mighty fortress,’’ he has for many early months and years identi-
fied with the parent’s omnipotent quality. As it turns out, such omnipotence
was partially and reluctantly relinquished as the child came to recognize during
his third and fourth years the limitations of his capacity to control the world
(the primal, narcissistic wound); but now, through religious narrative, such
omnipotence can be partially regained, recouped, through a vicarious,
fantasy-level participation in the Almighty’s mightiness. The child can
once more identify himself with a limitless, omnipotent protector. Still again,
the religious realm guides the child, tells him ‘‘yes’’ in response to certain activ-
ities, certain behaviors, and tells him ‘‘no’’ in response to other interests
and inclinations, thus echoing the primal ‘‘yes’’ and ‘‘no’’ that found their way
interactionally to the child’s mind during the phase in which the child’s every
move was subject to the parent’s administration. All of this, divine creation,
divine support, divine love, divine omnipotence, divine protection, divine
guidance, may be subsumed under the general notion of infantile attachment
to an internalized, all-powerful parental presence.
Accordingly, what the child is capable of projecting, of externalizing
psychically as he enters the representational, verbal, symbolic stage of his
development, and what Christianity extends to him through its ‘‘reality,’’ its
doctrinal narrative at the center of which resides the invisible, supernatural
Trinity—these two perceptual realms, or worlds, now begin to touch and to

ignite. The child affirms the religious realm because, like the presubjective
realm that he has internalized and transmuted into his self-structure, it has
‘‘the impact of singular truth’’ at the unconscious level of implicit recollection.
Because the child cannot see the naturalistic, psychological, developmental
connection between his own mind-brain, his own internal world, and the tran-
scendent, supramundane narrative to which he is now increasingly exposed at
the conscious level, he is impelled to accept the truth-claims of the Christian
institutions that surround him ‘‘out there’’ in the wider world. Implicit
memory validates cultural myth. The perceptual, affective nature of the
child’s inward domain is predisposed unconsciously to affirm the culture’s
religious stories, to say ‘‘yes’’ to the supernatural landscape that looms.
On the inside, the child can feel the accuracy of Christianity’s macrocosmic
depictions. As the old expression has it, he’s ‘‘been there,’’ and he’s ‘‘done that’’
already. To view the matter from the ‘‘hard’’ neuropsychological perspective,
we might say that the child’s mind-brain, primed and grooved by his pre-
subjective interactions, maps his early experience onto the religious narrative
he encounters. As Gerald M. Edelman would express it, the child’s emerging
supernatural world, his newly discovered ‘‘present’’ reality, is not only
perceived, it is also ‘‘remembered,’’ just as all his subsequent ‘‘presents’’ will
be remembered as his mind-brain processes information according to
‘‘programs’’ it already ‘‘knows.’’14 What we have here is a perfect or nearly
perfect neurologic, affective correspondence or fit, one that does not require
proof because it has the inward ring of truth, the veracious impact of the
child’s very selfhood that has been molded by his presubjective, interpersonal
dealings with his loving caregiver, the dealings that provide the mnemonic
‘‘stuff ’’ of his implicit recollection. And indeed, if those dealings contained
maltreatments or even abuses of some sort, the child’s reentering process,
his remapping of the early ‘‘data,’’ is flexible enough to transform imperfec-
tion into wished-for ideal, the flawed god of the nursery into the wondrous
God of Christian doctrine. When the religious world dawns, it discloses a
perfection that anyone of any age might detect and crave immediately.
The mighty Lord, the mighty Jesus, the mighty Holy Spirit—all of them will
love you, protect you, and guide you: what joyful tidings!
Similar unconscious recognition occurs as the child is introduced gradually
to Christian ritual and, in particular, to Christianity’s cardinal ritualistic enact-
ment, prayer. With an eye to the individual, subjective variety of prayer, we
note the child (and later, of course, the adult) going to his knees, adopting a
worshipful, dependent attitude, bowing or perhaps prostrating himself, taking
his legs away, manifesting submission and helplessness—the chief prerequisites
for successful supplication, as we see in a later section. We note also the prayer-
ful requests for assistance, for succor, for protection and nourishment (one’s
‘‘daily bread’’), as well as the expressions of gratitude and love. To proceed at
once to the heart of the matter, we note the supplicator acting out an unerring
metaphorical version of the basic biological situation, the primal symbiotic
attachment, in which the helpless, dependent little one calls on the omnipotent
big one for physical and emotional sustenance, for the continuation and the
enhancement of life. Thousands upon thousands of times, for years, the child
has experienced and internalized this arrangement, this condition, this state,
and now as he moves toward the Christian domain, he is instructed to recreate
it again and again through prayer. The upshot is clear: Christianity’s chief
ritual, its essential rite, its sine qua non, is designed to foster in the supplicator
regardless of his age or circumstance an implicit, state-dependent memory of
the parent-child relationship from which his self-structure, his identity, his
existence initially arose. Prayer returns the pray-er unconsciously to the inter-
nalized root of his being and thus triggers a sense of God’s loving presence that
has ‘‘the impact of singular truth.’’ Just doing this is enough to awaken the old
feelings of dependency, connection, and care. Just doing this is enough to
arouse the oldest and most persistent implicit memory that we retain at the
affective, neurological level. One has only to ask in order to receive (Matt. 7:7).
One has only to ask in order to make contact with a loving, supportive presence
on the ‘‘other side,’’ a loving, supportive being from the putative supernatural
sphere. Of course the supplicator knows that his Lord is present: he can feel
the Lord within by virtue of his having internalized into his mind-brain the
daily, hourly, moment-to-moment presence of his loving, all-powerful, care-
giving provider during the weeks, months, and years of the early period. What
we can term only a massive affective and neuronic conditioning has prepared
him psychically for the uncanny sensation of the Almighty’s engendering close-
ness. It is in this naturalistic, psychological way, and in this way alone, that
prayer is able to ‘‘prove’’ the presence of God, the ‘‘miracle’’ of His caring,
responsive existence. Thus, Christianity turns out once again to comprise a
fresh neural ‘‘mapping’’ onto a well-established neural and affective ‘‘reality.’’
It derives its attractive power, its validity as a ‘‘supernatural’’ enterprise, from
precisely the realm of implicit, state-dependent memory, from precisely the
condition of infantile amnesia that loads the potential practitioner up with
proto-religious beliefs and sentiments that he cannot cognitionally locate, let
alone fathom. The way is open for the projection of purely inward materials
(one’s religious ‘‘convictions’’) onto the external world, as well as for the estab-
lishment of Christianity’s timeless, official ‘‘mysteries’’: it is the ‘‘innocent’’ who
‘‘see.’’ It is the ‘‘child’’ who apprehends the deepest religious truths and who
possesses thereby the key to the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3). It hardly
needs to be added that billions of ‘‘innocent children’’ currently inhabit
the Earth.
The external, explicit supports for religious belief, the aspects of Christianity
with which we are all thoroughly familiar, are tied integrally to the uncon-
scious, implicit foundation and make the religion’s doctrinal, supernatural
claims overwhelmingly persuasive. Obviously such claims take on a life of
their own, but their lifeblood flows afresh as each generation internalizes
and subsequently projects its primal interactions with the care-giving parent.
Christian doctrine would be empty of meaning were it not unconsciously
grounded in the basic biological situation of dependency, succor, and love.
Indeed, as we have just seen, the presubjective period primes the young
believer affectively and neurologically for the transcendent rituals and narra-
tives to which he is now regularly exposed. Religious attachment is reattach-
ment. Religious presentations re-present the past through the workings
of implicit, state-dependent memory. The child listened to the parent’s
verbalizations and took his direction and comfort therefrom. Now he listens
to the Omnipotent’s ‘‘word,’’ directly as it is proffered in His Book or indi-
rectly as it is explained by His official, authoritative interpreters—the priest
or the pastor, each in his distinctive and sometimes splendid trappings.
The young worshiper is told to sit still and pay attention. He sees his parents
doing exactly what he is told to do. He sees hundreds, perhaps thousands of
others similarly busying themselves with holy books and supplications, read-
ing, pondering, mumbling, discussing, standing up and sitting down on
command, crossing themselves. In the company of his parents, who also
instruct him, he gazes at churches, cathedrals, stained glass, gigantic columns,
and domes. He hears chanted prayers, harmonic, mesmeric hymns, sonorous
sermons, and pronouncements. He is swept along in processions, swept up in
festivals, kissed, and congratulated for his loyal participation. What child
could resist, particularly as ritual and narrative, including, above all, the rite
of supplication and the story of the loving Parent-God, continually echo, or
mirror, the unconscious shape of his own experience as it transpired during
the years that precede the advent of symbolic enactments and expressions?
The variations from culture to culture and from child to child are, of course,
notable; yet the underlying neural, affective, causative factors apply generally,
worldwide, across the centuries, down to the present day.
The point arises: is not the ‘‘map’’ of the early period only the first in a
series of ‘‘spiritual’’ maps, a series that is characterized by increasing moral
and theological complexity that mirrors our development over the years,
indeed over an entire life span? I reply as follows: assuredly this is so.
However, all the spiritual maps that are devised and entered with time’s pas-
sage are based upon the first one, which reflects the early period. The initial,
unconscious, internalized experience with the loving, care-giving provider
holds the primal, ‘‘eternal’’ source of Christianity’s affective power, the
primal, foundational source of its compelling, persistent appeal, its mystery,
its resistance to logic and reason. The initial map in the depths of the mind
is the powerhouse. To dislodge it, deconstruct it, destroy it in one way or
another is quite simply to lose the living power of one’s faith, to dry up reli-
giously, to abandon the holy, life-giving waters in which the ‘‘children’’ and
the ‘‘innocent’’ bathe their minds and spirits. Christianity thrives when its
adherents remain in close touch with the infantile level of their development,
preserving their early, projective realities, their implicit memories of primal
symbiosis, of magical asking and magical receiving from the omnipotent
parental creator and provider. Although one can grow ‘‘spiritually,’’ there is
no growing out of the infantile stage. Bear in mind, I am not writing about
theism here, or rational arguments concerning the ultimate origin of the uni-
verse. I am writing about emotional, heartfelt belief in an anthropomorphic,
tripartite God Who is concerned with and responsive to the idiosyncratic
wishes and needs of individual worshipers. Precisely this kind of belief is a
natural, projective outgrowth of implicitly recollected parental ministrations
in infancy. Were we loved parentally in the beginning? Well, we still are.
The beginning is now. It is always now in that sense where Christianity is
concerned. We are never without a parent unless we choose to be by rejecting
the existence of a loving, supernatural Provider. If we are ‘‘theological ani-
mals,’’ as some maintain,15 then we are such because our ‘‘theology’’ fits in
smoothly with our ‘‘adult’’ perception of the universe around us. What after
all can interfere with the belief in a supernatural system that does not require
a single empirical fact to substantiate its claims and that is felt to be true at the
deepest inward level by those who fervently wish it to be so? For secularists, of
course, the Christian ‘‘program’’ is irrelevant, or perhaps unengaging, because
it has been replaced by other ‘‘programs,’’ by other neural, perceptual connec-
tions, by other narratives, by other theoretical outlooks and conclusions.
To put the matter crudely, Christians continue to be emotionally and
intellectually susceptible to facets of the mind-brain to which secularists are
susceptible no longer.
The Early Period

That the issues surrounding Christianity engage deeply rooted, perhaps
antithetical, and probably evolutional tendencies within us should be clear
at this juncture. On the one hand, we want to feel safe in the world, con-
nected to the matrix, attached to a meaningful, even loving universe; we want
as much security and as little anxiety as possible. On the other hand, we want
to see, to perceive things as accurately as we can, to clear away the mist of
wishful, illusory ideas no matter what the price we have to pay in emotional
discomfort, including the discomfort that may arise from an awareness of
our mortality. Is there another aspect of our fundamental humanity that goes
off like this in two opposing yet perfectly natural directions? However, we
can’t simply plunge into these issues armed only with a preliminary under-
standing of our theoretical position as presented in the context. We must
sharpen and deepen the particulars of our approach, grow them as it were,
in preparation for the conclusions that will eventually emerge. Let’s look,
first, at the all-important emotional events that rest upon the axis of separa-
tion and attachment.
Regardless of the geographical location and the nature of familial organiza-
tion, the conflict between separation and merger not only dominates the life
of the infant but extends itself far beyond infancy and childhood into the life
of the adolescent and adult. It revolves around the struggle to become an
autonomous, separate person, differentiated and distinct, and at the same
time, to retain one’s connection to significant others—either the actual
parents or their later substitutes in a protean variety of shapes and forms.
For the human creature (as I indicated in the previous paragraph), two of
life’s most powerful needs are, paradoxically, to be joined and to be separate,
to be related and to be independent, to be autonomous and to be connected;
and it is precisely this paradoxical and in some sense contradictory thrust in
human growth and development, this antithetical, two-sided inclination of
people, that makes human behavior so problematical, so maddeningly diffi-
cult to see and to fathom, and that brings so much confusion to the lives of
individuals and societies. Ethel S. Person, in her wonderful book Dreams of
Love and Fateful Encounters, renders the matter this way: ‘‘Without self-will
there can be no psychological separation. But neither is there any highly indi-
viduated self. The self is delineated only through separation, but the sense of
being separated proves impossible to bear. The solitary self feels cut off, alone,
without resources. The solitary self feels impelled to merge with a new
object.’’16 What Dr. Person has captured, if I may be permitted to indicate
the issue still again, is that the two needs, to be separate and joined, indepen-
dent and connected, are from a deep psychological angle one need neither
side of which finds expression without engaging the other, like a crab going
backward and forward at the same time. When the desire for merger is felt,
it typically engages the need to be separate, and the need to be separate
engages the wish to be connected, joined. While it is easy to write about the
matter, to employ such terms as alogical, paradoxical, and antithetical, it
can be most unpleasant to experience the actual conflict when it occurs, along
with the inner confusion that it often engenders. I would suggest, in fact, that
we have here a major source of human stress.
Because the world of infancy and childhood is not an easy one to capture
discursively, because as adults we run the risk of ascribing to the very young
aims and motives at work in us rather than in them, I would prefer to explore
the Christian realm psychologically without also exploring life’s early period,
but alas, there is just no hope of getting at the truth that way. Christian
behavior is an outgrowth, a development, in a special sense an expression of
this period with its symbiotic attachments, its blissful transformations, its
powerful, persistent anxieties, attunements, frustrations, and fears. Indeed,
if the science of psychology has made a lasting and valuable contribution to
the understanding of ‘‘spiritual’’ conduct, it is in precisely this area. From
the many psychological accounts of infancy and childhood, I choose what is
generally regarded as the most methodologically sophisticated, accurate, and
helpful, namely, Margaret S. Mahler, Fred Pine, and Anni Bergman’s Psycho-
logical Birth of the Human Infant.17 A child psychiatrist and pediatrician
working with normal children in a specially constructed facility in New York
City during the 1950s and 1960s, Mahler (and her associates) places the
accent immediately on the struggle between separation and union.
We take for granted, she reminds us, our experience of ourselves as both
fully ‘‘in’’ and fully separate from the ‘‘world out there’’ (p. 3). Our conscious-
ness of ourselves as distinct, differentiated entities and our concomitant
absorption into the external environment, without an awareness of self, are
the polarities between which we move with varying ease, and with varying
degrees of alternation or simultaneity. Yet the establishment of such con-
sciousness, such ordinary, taken-for-granted awareness, is a slowly unfolding
process that is not coincident in time with our biological emergence from
the womb. It is tied closely and developmentally to our dawning experience
of our bodies as separate in space and belonging only to us, and to our dawn-
ing experience of the primary love object as also separate in space, as having
an existence of his or her own. Moreover, the struggle to achieve this
‘‘individuation’’ reverberates throughout the course of our lives: ‘‘It is never
finished; it remains always active; new phases of the life cycle find new
derivatives of the earliest processes still at work’’ (p. 3). What must be
stressed, in particular, here is the strength of both sides of the polarity.
Children, with every move toward maturation, are confronted with the threat
of ‘‘object loss,’’ with traumatic situations involving separation from the
caregiver. Thus they are constantly tempted to draw back, to regress, to move
toward the caregiver and the old relation as opposed to away from the care-
giver and the anticipated future, the new reality. At the same time, the
normally endowed child strives mightily to emerge from his early fusion
(we could say confusion) with the mother, to escape and to grow. His indi-
viduation consists precisely of those developmental achievements, those
increasing motor and mental accomplishments, that begin to mark his
separate existence, his separate identity as a separate being. The ambivalent
impulses toward and away, the great urge to differentiate and at the same time
stay connected, are in Mahler’s words, forever intertwined (p. 4), although
they may proceed divergently, one or the other lagging behind or leaping
ahead during a given period.
Mahler makes plain that this process is not merely one of many equally
important processes that transpire during the early time. On the contrary,
the achievement of separation constitutes the very core of the self, the founda-
tion of one’s identity and being as a person. Yet this foundation can be gained
(and here is the echo of a paradox again) only if the parent gives to the child a
persistent, uninterrupted feeling of connection, of union—a tie that encour-
ages the very breaking of it. This delicate balancing act is never perfect, and
Mahler emphasizes throughout the course of her study that old conflicts over
separation, old, unresolved issues of identity and bodily boundaries, can be
reawakened or even remain active throughout the course of one’s existence,
at any or all stages of the life cycle. What appears to be a struggle for connec-
tion or distinctness in the now of one’s experience can be the flare-up of the
ancient struggle in which one’s self began to emerge from the orbit of the
magna mater. We will shortly be exploring the degree to which this last obser-
vation sheds light upon one facet of Christianity in which the practitioner
longs to be absorbed into the supernatural body of the Deity. By separation,
then, Mahler does not mean primarily the physical separation of the baby
in space or the distance from the caregiver, the kind of separation we associ-
ate, for example, with the work of John Bowlby. What Mahler has in mind
is an inward or intrapsychic separation from both the mother and her exten-
sion, the world. The gradual development of this subjective awareness, this
inward perception of the self and the other, leads eventually to clear, distinct
inner representations of a ‘‘self ’’ that is distinguished from ‘‘external objects.’’
It is precisely this sense of being a separate individual that psychotic children
are unable to achieve. Similarly, when Mahler uses the term ‘‘symbiosis,’’ the
accent is not upon a behavioral state but an inward condition, a feature of
primitive emotional life wherein the differentiation between the self and the
mother has not occurred, or where a regression to an undifferentiated state
has occurred. This does not necessarily require the presence of the mother;
it can be based on primitive images of oneness, or on a denial of percep-
tions that postulate separation. Thus for Mahler, identity during the early
period does not refer to the child having a sense of who he is; it refers to
the child having a sense that he is (p. 8). Indeed, the sense that he is can be
regarded as the first step in the process of an unfolding individuality. The
achievement of separation-individuation is a kind of ‘‘second birth,’’ a
‘‘hatching’’ from the symbiotic mother-infant ‘‘membrane’’ in which the
child is originally contained (p. 9).
Mahler calls the earliest stage of development ‘‘autistic.’’ The infant
‘‘spends most of his day in a half-sleeping, half-waking state’’ (p. 41).
He awakens mainly to feed and falls to sleep again when he is satisfied, or
relieved of tensions. There is nothing abnormal about this ‘‘autism,’’ as Mahler
employs the term. The baby simply lacks awareness of the mother as a minis-
tering agent and of himself as the object of her ministrations. From the second
month on, however, the baby increasingly feels the presence of the mother,
and it is just this sense of the caretaker being there that marks the inception
of the normal symbiotic phase, which reaches a peak of intensity at about six
to nine months. The most remarkable feature of this phase is contained
in Mahler’s point that the infant ‘‘behaves and functions as though he and
his mother were an omnipotent system—a dual-unity with one common
boundary’’ (p. 44). The symbiotic infant participates emotionally and per-
ceptually in a kind of delusional fusion with the omnipotent mothering
figure. Later in infancy and childhood, and indeed later in life at all stages
when we experience severe stress, ‘‘this is the mechanism to which the ego
regresses’’ (p. 44).
In this way, when the autistic phase subsides, or, to use the metaphors char-
acteristic of Mahler’s treatise, when the ‘‘autistic shell’’ has ‘‘cracked’’ and the
child can no longer ‘‘keep out external stimuli,’’ a ‘‘second protective, yet
selective and receptive shield’’ begins to develop in the form of the ‘‘symbiotic
orbit,’’ the mother and the child’s dual-unity. While the normal autistic phase
serves postnatal physiological growth and homeostasis, the normal symbiotic
phase marks the all-important human capacity to bring the mother into a psy-
chic fusion that comprises ‘‘the primal soil from which all subsequent relation-
ships form’’ (p. 48). We commence our existence as people in the illusion that
the other (who appears to be omnipotent) is a part of the self. Although the
mother is actually out there, ministering to the child, she is perceived by the lat-
ter to be a facet of his own organism, his own primitive ego. What the mother
‘‘magically’’ accomplishes in the way of care—the production of milk, the pro-
vision of warmth, the sensation of security—the baby omnipotently attributes
to the mother and to himself. At the emotional, preverbal level, he declares, in

effect, ‘‘I am not separate from my symbiotic partner; my partner and I are one.
Whatever my partner appears to possess and to do, I possess and do as well.
Whatever power my partner has, I also have. We are one, one omnipotent inde-
structible unit, twin stars revolving around each other in a single orbit of emo-
tion and will.’’ As D. W. Winnicott unforgettably expresses it, the feeling of
omnipotence is so strong in the infant (and so persistently clung to in the grow-
ing child when the dual-unity of the symbiotic stage begins to break down) that
it is ‘‘nearly a fact.’’18
What this means, of course, is that the decline of symbiosis, or the increas-
ing awareness of separation on the part of the child, will be experienced as a
loss of self. If union with mother means wholeness, then disunion will mean
less than wholeness. Let us examine Mahler’s account of this original human
trauma (the expulsion from paradise), and let us bear in mind as we proceed,
first, that the transition from symbiosis to individuation is a multifaceted,
complex process that consumes the first three years of life, and second, that
for many, many people the loss of omnipotent merger and the narcissistic
gratification that goes with it is never entirely accepted at the deep, uncon-
scious level. I am not suggesting that the infant’s growing abilities and inde-
pendence fail to provide him with satisfaction; to be sure, they do, and
Mahler is careful to emphasize both sides of the equation—the drive to
remain with and to relinquish the mother. I am suggesting only that the
movement away is attended by powerful anxiety and by the irrational wish
to have it both ways: separateness and symbiotic union. Also, as one would
suspect, the babies in Mahler’s study often differ dramatically in their devel-
opmental inclinations and capacities, but more on that later.
What Mahler terms the ‘‘first subphase’’ of ‘‘differentiation’’ occurs ‘‘at the
peak of symbiosis’’ when the infant is about six months old. During his more
frequent periods of wakefulness, the field of his attention gradually expands
‘‘through the coming into being of outwardly directed perceptual activity’’
(p. 53). No longer is the ‘‘symbiotic orbit’’ the exclusive focus of his limited,
yet evolving ‘‘sensorium.’’ As the seventh month approaches, ‘‘there are defi-
nite signs that the baby is beginning to differentiate his own body’’ from that
of his mother. ‘‘Tentative experimentation at individuation’’ can be observed
in such behavior as ‘‘pulling at the mother’s hair, ears, or nose, putting food
into the mother’s mouth, and straining his body away from mother in order
to have a better look at her, to scan her and the environment. This is in
contrast to simply moulding into mother when held.’’ The infant’s growing
visual and motor powers help him to ‘‘draw his body together’’ and to
commence the construction of his own, separate ego on the basis of this
bodily awareness and sensation. At times, the baby even begins to move away
from the mother’s enveloping arms, to resist the passive ‘‘lap babyhood’’ that
marks the earliest months of life. As he does this, however, he constantly
‘‘checks back’’ to mother with his eyes. He is becoming interested in mother
as ‘‘mother’’ and compares her with ‘‘other’’ people and things. He discovers
what belongs and what does not belong to the mother’s body—a brooch,
eyeglasses, a comb. He is starting to discriminate, in short, between the
mother and all that which is different from or similar to her (pp. 54–55).
This incipient individuation on the baby’s part is accompanied by consid-
erable anxiety, the most striking manifestation of which occurs in the pres-
ence of strangers. Like so much else in the area of separation-union,
‘‘stranger anxiety’’ evinces two distinct yet interrelated aspects. On the one
hand, strangers fascinate the infant, who, in Mahler’s words, shows great
‘‘eagerness to find out about them.’’ On the other hand, strangers terrify the
infant by reminding him of the other-than-mother world, the world of sepa-
ration, the world that appears as symbiosis and dual-unity fade. After point-
ing out that babies vary in their susceptibility to stranger anxiety (and other
anxiety as well), Mahler offers us the example of Peter, who at eight months
reacts initially with wonder and curiosity to a stranger’s mild overtures for
his attention. Yet, two minutes later, although he is close to his mother, even
leaning against her leg, Peter bursts into tears as the stranger touches his hair
(p. 57). Such is the emotional turbulence that accompanies the onset of
individuation during the first subphase (pp. 56–57).
Mahler divides the second subphase into the early practicing period and
the practicing subphase proper. During the former, the 10- to 11-month
infant becomes more and more deeply absorbed in his expanding mental
and physical universe. He begins rapidly to distinguish his own body from
his mother’s, to actively establish a specific (as opposed to symbiotic) bond
with her, and to indulge his autonomous, independent interests while in close
proximity to her. In a word, he begins to transfer his absorption in mother to
the world around him. He explores the objects in his vicinity—toys, bottles,
blankets—with his eyes, hands, and mouth; his growing locomotor capacity
widens his environment (p. 66). Yet in all of this, Mahler is careful to point
out, the mother is ‘‘still the center of the child’s universe.’’ His experience of
his ‘‘new world’’ is subtly ‘‘related’’ to her, and his excursions into the other-
than-mother realm are often followed by periods of intense clinging and a
refusal to separate. For an interval, the baby is absorbed in some external
object and seems oblivious to mother’s presence; a moment later he jumps
up and rushes to her side expressing his need for physical proximity
(pp. 66–67). Again and again he displays a desire for ‘‘emotional refueling,’’
that is to say, for a dose of maternal supplies—hugging, stroking, chatting—

after a period of independent activity (p. 69). What Mahler’s children (and all
children) want—and we come here to a crucial utterance—is to ‘‘move away
independently’’ from the mother and, at the same time, to ‘‘remain con-
nected to her’’ (p. 70).
The practicing subphase proper (11–15 months) marks the high point
of the child’s move toward a separate existence. Not only does he experience a
dramatic spurt in cognitive development, he also achieves what Mahler calls
‘‘the greatest step in human individuation,’’ his upright locomotion. These
‘‘precious months’’ of increasing powers and skills comprise ‘‘the child’s love
affair with the world’’: the ‘‘plane of his vision changes; . . . he finds unexpected
and changing perspectives. . . . The world is the junior toddler’s oyster. . . . Nar-
cissism is at its peak. . . . The chief characteristic of this period is the child’s
great narcissistic investment in his own functions, his own body, and the objec-
tives of his expanding reality’’ (p. 71). Adding to the exhilaration, notes Mahler,
is the child’s ‘‘elated escape from fusion with, from engulfment by, mother.’’
Here is the movement away in its most striking biological and psychological
expression (p. 71). Yet even here, in the midst of this great expansion, this ‘‘love
affair with the world,’’ the paradoxical, ambivalent aspect of human develop-
ment rears its head as mightily as ever in the form of deep-seated, pervasive
anxiety. ‘‘The course of true love never did run smooth,’’ observes Shakespeare,
and the words would seem to apply to our earliest developmental experiences.
The child’s rapidly expanding ego functions bring with them both the threat of
‘‘object loss’’ and the fear of being ‘‘reengulfed’’ by the mother. One minute he
expresses a need for ‘‘checking back,’’ for ‘‘emotional refueling,’’ for knowing
exactly the mother’s whereabouts; the next minute he forcibly removes himself
from mother’s caressing arms in an effort to assert his capacity for active, inde-
pendent functioning. Sometimes the baby runs away to make sure mother
wants to catch him up, yet when she does, he shows resentment at being held
and stroked (p. 73). Even the enormous step of upright locomotion and the
increase in perception that it brings to the child holds both sides of the dual-
unity equation. It is the need for mother’s emotional support at the instant he
learns to walk that Mahler captures unforgettably: ‘‘The child walks alone with
his eyes fixed on his mother’s face, not on the difficulties in his way. . . . In the
very same moment that he is emphasizing his need for her, he is proving that
he can do without her.’’ In this way, the toddler ‘‘feels the pull of separation
from his mother at the same time he asserts his individuation. It is a mixed
experience, the child demonstrating that he can and cannot do without, his
mother.’’ As for the mother’s physical absence during this period (she may be
working, ill, etc.), it typically sparks sadness, or even depression in the infant.
The ‘‘symbiotic mothering half ’’ of the ‘‘self ’’ is ‘‘missed’’ during the very
subphase that is most obviously filled with the joys of separation (pp. 73–74).
The entire separation-individuation process culminates at approximately
30 months in what Mahler terms ‘‘the rapprochement subphase,’’ the period
during which the infant perceives with growing clarity and certainty that he
and mother are separate beings, that the old symbiosis and the narcissistic
gratifications (including omnipotence) that go with it are illusory, that he is
physically and psychically alone. Here is Mahler’s powerful description of this
watershed in a person’s life:
With the acquisition of primitive skills and perceptual cognitive faculties there
has been an increasingly clear differentiation, a separation, between the intra-
psychic representation of the object and the self-representation. At the very
height of mastery, toward the end of the practicing period, it had already begun
to dawn on the junior toddler that the world is not his oyster, that he must cope
with it more or less on his own, very often as a relatively helpless, small, and
separate individual, unable to command relief or assistance merely by feeling
the need for it or by giving voice to that need (omnipotence).
(p. 78)
We may note parenthetically at this juncture that the core of Christian doc-
trine and rite is designed to deny precisely this momentous event, and not
only deny it but bring about its reversal through just those mechanisms that
Mahler mentions here, namely, ‘‘mere feeling’’ (wishing) and ‘‘giving voice’’
(prayers and invocations). Needless to say, we will soon explore these denials
and reversals in great depth.
With the erosion of symbiosis, the ‘‘fear of losing the love of the object,’’
as opposed to losing the object, makes itself felt increasingly in the child
(pp. 78–79). Up to this point (the rapprochement subphase), the object
and the self have been more or less psychically indistinguishable. Now, as
differentiation occurs in earnest, the object’s love becomes the focus of the
child’s attention. This does not mean that the original anxiety over loss of
the object as a part of the self disappears. It means only that an additional,
more conscious or even cognitive anxiety has been superimposed upon
the original, primal dread. Accordingly, the toddler begins to demand the
mother’s constant attention. He is deeply preoccupied with her whereabouts.
He expresses enormous anger and anxiety at her leave-taking, and anguish at
being left behind. He clings to mother, seeks her lap, and may begin to show
a dependent interest in maternal substitutes. In a thousand ways he attempts
to coerce the mother into fulfilling his wishes. He tries at times to be magnifi-
cently separate, omnipotent, rejecting: he will gain the mother’s love and
attention by showing her the proverbial ‘‘cold shoulder.’’ At other times he

plays the helpless baby. For weeks on end his wooing of mother alternates
sharply with his expressions of resentment and outrage (p. 97). How do the
mothers react to all this? ‘‘Some cannot accept the child’s demandingness;
others are unable to face the child’s gradual separation, the fact that the child
can no longer be regarded as part of her.’’ Yet, whatever the relational dynam-
ics happen to be, they cannot stop the process: ‘‘no matter how insistently the
toddler tries to coerce the mother, she and he can no longer function effec-
tively as a dual unit—that is to say, the child can no longer maintain his
delusion of parental omnipotence, which he still at times expects will restore
the symbiotic status quo.’’ The child must ‘‘gradually and painfully give up
the delusion of his own grandeur, often by way of dramatic fights with
mother—less so, it seemed to us, with father. This is the crossroads of what
we term the rapprochement crisis’’ (pp. 78–79). Mahler observes in a sentence
at which we prick up our ears as we ponder the nature of supernatural Chris-
tianity that ‘‘many uniquely human problems and dilemmas’’ that are ‘‘some-
times never completely resolved during the entire life cycle’’ have their origin
here, during the end of symbiosis and the onset of separation (p. 100).
The resolution of the rapprochement crisis comes about in a variety of
ways, the description of which concludes the first half of Mahler’s study.
As the child experiences a growing capacity to be alone, his clamoring for
omnipotent control starts to diminish. He shows less separation anxiety,
fewer alternating demands for closeness and autonomy. Not only does he
begin to understand empathetically what his mother is going through, but
he begins to identify with the problems and struggles of the youngsters
around him (p. 110). In this way, he begins to turn to other people, and in
many instances to his own father, in his effort to satisfy his needs. And with
the wholesale emergence of gender differences, he starts to participate in
those activities that are peculiar to his or her sex. Equally important, the
child’s capacity for verbalization and symbolization begins to lead him toward
the cultural realm, toward an endless variety of substitutive objects that char-
acteristically take the form of ‘‘blankies,’’ storybooks, toys, pets, and so on.
We might say that the child’s growing ability to incorporate the world into
his burgeoning ego leads him to a series of new internalizations, new inward
presences, that are appropriate to his age and to the problems he confronts.
He is beginning to live with his own thoughts and with the companions of
his inner world. This is what we usually mean by ‘‘being alone.’’ In the major-
ity of cases and generally for all normal children, such developments culmi-
nate in the establishment of what Mahler calls ‘‘object constancy,’’ and with
it, the inception of an individuated life. By object constancy Mahler has in
mind ‘‘the presence of a reliable internal image that remains relatively stable
irrespective of the state of instinctual need or inner discomfort. On the basis
of this achievement, temporary separation can be lengthened and better
tolerated’’ (p. 110). This is the necessary step, the vital inward accomplish-
ment, that permits further growth, further individuation, and further ego
strength in the preschooler and eventually in the school child.
Mahler devotes the second half of her treatise to several lengthy case histor-
ies in which we see children struggling from normal autism and symbiosis to
separation and individuation. She strives in these sections to illustrate her
theoretical position at the clinical level, the level from which the theoretical
materials originally arose, of course. As she does this, Mahler makes clear
something that she stresses in many places in Chapter 3, Part One, namely,
that it is the combination of a particular caretaker interacting with a particu-
lar child that ultimately shapes the child’s emerging character in terms of both
conscious and unconscious processes. Projections pass not only from the baby
to the mother, but from the mother to the baby as well. ‘‘It seemed that the
ability to cope with separateness, as well as with actual physical separation,’’
declares Mahler,
was dependent in each case on the history of the mother-child relationship, as

well as on its present state. We found it hard to pinpoint just what it was in
the individual cases that produced more anxiety in some and an ability to cope
in others. Each child had established by this time his own characteristic ways of
coping.
(p. 103)
Thus, when we look at the whole picture, we spy an element of mystery, a

unique, intangible quality that pertains to each mother-infant bond and that
can never be fully explained by observers, or indeed by the mother and infant
who are involved in the relationship. What occurs early on is not strictly an
enigma but it has its enigmatic aspect, and we must always bear this in mind.
Human behavior finally escapes whatever logical space we try to fit it into.
Reality happens, from the inside, and can never be perfectly reconstructed.
As I suggested on several occasions in the context, the struggle for and
against separation extends itself powerfully not only into the ritualistic behav-
iors of Christianity but into the nature and development of our perceptual
lives generally, including the whole of culture. Although it may appear a bit
strange to express the matter thus, our ordinary consciousness in the widest,
most all-inclusive sense is inextricably bound up with the early struggle over
separation and cannot be grasped apart from it. We must remember as we
proceed that what Mahler describes in the final paragraphs of her theoretical
section is the passing of the rapprochement crises, not the passing of the
separation-union conflict. Indeed, it is the position of this book, and has been
from the outset, that this conflict never ceases, that it so forcefully shapes
and directs our conduct as to gain a place among the central conflicts of our
experience as a form of life. As Mahler herself observes, a ‘‘sound image’’ of
the maternal figure does not mean that the old longing for merger stops, that
the fear of reengulfment goes away, that anxiety, ambivalence, and splitting
suddenly vanish, along with feelings of omnipotence and narcissistic grandi-
osity; it does not mean that the primal terrors of rejection and loss miracu-
lously disappear forever. The establishment of a sound maternal image
simply means that the little person can stumble ahead still loaded with the
great, absorbing issues of the early time, still loaded with the stress that
attends the erosion of symbiosis, still wishing contradictorily for both merger
and differentiation, and still smarting from the collapse of dual-unity
(p. 115). What occurs as the infant undergoes separation has been described
by Ana-Maria Rizzuto as a ‘‘life-long mourning process that triggers an
endless search for replacement.’’19 To express the matter from a different yet
crucially related angle, the passing of the rapprochement crisis simply means
that one is now in a position to act out among others this basic human
dilemma, this rooted, unconscious issue as it manifests itself projectively at
the levels of both individual and group conduct. It means that one can now
seek for omnipotence, fusion, and narcissistic gratification in the wider
world. In a manner of speaking, one is loose. The old cliché that we are all
more or less neurotic hopefully emerges with fresh clarity at this juncture.
The dynamic, shaping influence of implicit memory on the Christian reli-
gion may also emerge with fresh clarity here. As we peruse Mahler’s work and
come to appreciate the intensity and the complexity of the neonate’s initial
encounter with the world, we have the impression that the little one is passing
through a veritable lifetime of emotional and physical experience, a lifetime
of potent, interpersonal events. Yet the whole extended episode, incredibly,
is destined to go mnemonically underground, to discover a brain-based path-
way to the land of ‘‘infantile amnesia’’! Make no mistake, this is not because
babies can’t remember things. On the contrary, they have strong memorial
capacities almost from the outset. It is because ongoing mnemonic, neural
developments (mainly language), along with a host of emerging tasks and
requirements, come sharply to the fore as infancy gives way to childhood
and gradually relinquishes its hold upon the mind. As I have been suggesting
all along, we have in this remarkable situation the living seed of faith, of the
believer’s heartfelt conviction that his invisible, mysterious Parent-God is
there. Not only does the will to believe, to accept the veracity of Christian
narrative, push upward ineluctably toward consciousness from an inward

source one affectively recognizes yet cannot directly detect, but the narrative’s
wishful, alluring core holds the promise of attachment to a loving provider, to
a Spirit through Whom one may lessen the pain of precisely the separation
just described by Mahler. For human beings the combination is irresistible,
and its effects persist with varying degrees of intensity throughout the course
of the life cycle.
The Mirror
The genesis and the formation of the self derive from the baby’s initial mir-
roring experience with the mother. For the past half-century this remarkable
aspect of our origins has been studied intensively and has come to be regarded
as a central feature of our development. The investigations of René Spitz
and his associates during the 1950s and 1960s established at the clinical level
the baby’s inclination to concentrate on the mother’s face—and in particular
on her eyes—during periods of feeding. For three, or perhaps four, months
the nursing infant does not look at the mother’s breast (or at the bottle held
close to her breast) but at her face. ‘‘From the moment the mother comes into
the room to the end of nursing he stares at her face.’’20 What is especially
interesting in this regard is the connection between such primal gazing and
the mouth, or ‘‘oral cavity.’’ While the child takes into his mouth and body
his physical nourishment, he takes into his dawning awareness or his ‘‘visceral
brain’’ the emotional, psychological materials that he discovers in the face,
eyes, and bodily attitude of the mother. It is often remarked that the first self
is a bodily self and that our later life is influenced at the perceptual level by
the foundational experiences our bodies undergo as consciousness awakens.
We have here a compelling instance of how this works. When Spitz calls the
oral cavity in its conjunction with the mother’s body ‘‘the cradle of human
perception,’’ he reminds us that sucking in and spitting out are the first, the
most basic, and the most persistent perceptual behaviors among humans.
They underlie at the bodily level our subsequent rejections and acceptances,
our subsequent negations and celebrations, of experience.
Although Spitz established the baby’s inclination to stare at the mother’s
face, notes H. M. Southwood,21 whose discussion I follow closely here, he
did not state that mother and infant spend considerable time looking at each
other, nor did he contend that such looking, along with the mother initiating
the infant’s facial expressions and sounds, provided the means for the baby to
regard the mother’s face and sounds as his own. An inborn tendency on the
part of the infant prompts him to seek out his mother’s gaze and to do so
regularly and for extended periods. The mother, because of tendencies devel-
oped during the course of her relationship with her own mother, sets about
exploiting this mutual face-gazing activity. As the eye-to-eye contact becomes
frequent, and easily observed by the investigator, the mother’s inclination to
continually change her facial expression, as well as the quality of her vocalizing,
emerges with striking clarity. Usually she smiles and nods and coos; sometimes
in response to an infant frown she frowns. In virtually every instance, the
mother’s facial and vocal behavior comprises an imitation of the baby’s. Thus,
as the mother descends to the infant’s level, she provides him with a particular
kind of human reflection. She does not simply give the baby back his own self;
she reinforces a portion of the baby’s behavior in comparison with another
portion. She gives the baby back not merely a part of what he is doing but
something of her own in addition. In individual development, ‘‘the precursor
of the mirror is the mother’s face.’’22 The upshot may be stated as follows:
the kind of behavior we connect with our perceptual nature derives in large
measure from the behavior of the mother. Not only does she trigger the per-
ceiving self’s formation, she determines the kind of stimuli to which the child
will attend, including the stimuli that will eventually come through language.
Our mental makeup, then, is shaped by those we internalize during the
early phases of our development. Our earliest interactional perceptions
become dynamic parts of our personality structure and continue to influence
us in all that we do long after the specific individuals who were the aim of our
internalizing tendency have ceased to be. By the time we have reached adult-
hood there exists within us an inner world, a kind of psychic universe that is
inhabited by the people that have entered us, or more properly, that we have
taken into ourselves along our maturational way. We live in two worlds, from
the beginning, and our perceptual life must be regarded as a function of the
interaction of these worlds that continually impinge upon one another.
I want to reemphasize here that the parent-child interactions of the early
period must not be viewed as primarily cognitive events. In the words of
Daniel N. Stern to whose The Interpersonal World of the Infant I now turn,
‘‘They mainly involve affect and excitement’’ and become part of the infant’s
effort ‘‘to order the world by seeking invariants.’’ When the preverbal, inward
Representation of such Interaction becomes Generalized into what Stern calls
a RIG, the infant’s ‘‘sense of a core self ’’ is well upon its developmental way.
‘‘Affects,’’ writes Stern, ‘‘are excellent self-variants because of their relative
fixity,’’ which means, of course, that affects are a central part of mirroring.
By creating a ‘‘continuity of experience,’’ and in particular a ‘‘continuity of
affective experience,’’ the RIG provides the baby with the psychic, emotional
foundation of his subsequent perceptual interactions with the world. 23
As I earlier noted, we see the world ‘‘feelingly.’’ Thus, mirroring in its early
stages (we’ll come to the later stages very soon) comprises for Stern a ‘‘mediation’’
in which the caregiver ‘‘greatly influences the infant’s sense of wonder and
avidity for exploration.’’ It is ‘‘only the feeling state’’ that belongs to
the nascent self, that is a ‘‘self-invariant,’’ and ‘‘merger experiences’’ become
simply ‘‘a way of being with someone.’’ The infant lays down over and over
again the memory of specific affective episodes; he or she develops RIGs;
and he or she becomes susceptible to subsequent experiences (the ‘‘spiritual’’
plane) that recall the foundational ones. Later affective exchanges reactivate
the original exchanges; they ‘‘pack the wallop of the original lived experience in
the form of an active memory.’’ This is the essence of the infant’s affective
world (pp. 103, 109–10).
Employing terminology that will help us enormously in understanding
Christian experience, Stern calls these active memories ‘‘evoked companions’’
and suggests that they constitute what psychology usually refers to as internal-
ized relationships. ‘‘For instance,’’ Stern writes in an effort to let us know
exactly what he has in mind,
if a six-month-old, when alone, encounters a rattle and manages to grasp it and

shake it so that it makes a sound, the initial pleasure may quickly become
extreme delight and exuberance, expressed in smiling, vocalizing, and general
body wriggling. The extreme delight and exuberance is not the only result of
successful mastery, but also the historical result of similar past moments in the
presence of a delight-and-exuberance-enhancing (regulating) other.
It is partly a ‘‘social response,’’ but in this instance it takes place in a ‘‘nonso-

cial situation.’’ At such times, the original pleasure born of mastery acts as a
‘‘retrieval cue’’ and activates the RIG, resulting in an ‘‘imagined interaction
with an evoked companion’’ that includes, of course, the ‘‘shared and mutu-
ally induced delight’’ about the mastery (pp. 113, 116). Equally crucial is
Stern’s observation that evoked companions ‘‘never disappear.’’ They ‘‘lie dor-
mant throughout life,’’ and while they are always retrievable, ‘‘their degree of
activation is variable.’’ He writes, ‘‘Various evoked companions will be almost
constant companions in everyday life. Is it not so for adults when they are not
occupied with tasks? How much time each day do we spend in imagined
interactions that are either memories, or the fantasied practice of upcoming
events, or daydreams?’’ (pp. 116–18). Robert Rogers comments on these
materials, ‘‘The seemingly unaccountable experience by an adult of strong
emotion, such as love or anger, as a response to a relatively trivial situation
involving a comparative stranger might be accounted for by assuming that
an ‘evoked companion’ has suddenly been mobilized, however unconsciously.
Where else could all that affect come from?’’ Thus ‘‘attachment is the inter-
nalized representation of repetitive interactions with caregivers.’’ What is
internalized in the earliest representations ‘‘is not simply the infant’s own
action, nor the environments’ response, but the dynamic interplay between
the two.’’24 Can anyone fail to spy here the manner in which these citations
touch upon, indeed mesh with, our earlier discussion of separation anxiety
as presented in Mahler?
Many individual and group behaviors and beliefs, including those that
occur in the realm of Christianity, are designed unconsciously to address
the problem of separation (and/or other psychological problems) by offering
practitioners experiences that evoke companions. Such experiences grant the
solace of companionship to those who are struggling in the after-separation
world, those whose aloneness, self-alienation, or persistent separation anxiety
prime them to respond to an unseen universe of powerful forces and beings to
which they are ostensibly connected. Indeed, many of the figures at the heart
of Christian ritual (God the Father, the Son, Mary, and the Holy Spirit) may
be regarded as projective, psychological expressions, or complex, multilayered
symbolifications, of those longed-for inward companions associated origi-
nally with the dynamic affects included in the dual-unity situation, the baby’s
delicious, regulating, invariant, and internalized encounters with the caregiving
figures of the early period.
The Word
Eighty years ago, the pioneering investigations of the Russian linguist Lev
Vygotsky25 made clear that the development of language was not primarily
a cognitive process (the orthodox view) but an interactive, social process
loaded with emotional, bodily components from the preverbal period.
Because thought and speech develop in a parallel and reciprocal fashion, we
must ultimately think of language as a dynamic system of meaning in which
the emotional and the intellectual unite. The egocentric speech of the three-
year-old does not disappear when the child reaches seven or eight. Instead
of atrophying, such egocentric speech goes underground; that is, it turns into
inner speech and forms the foundation of that inward babble that, joined to
higher cognitive components, comes eventually to comprise a sizable portion
of our ordinary consciousness. In this way, the development of thinking is
not from the individual to the social but from the social to the individual.
The child starts conversing with himself as he has been doing with others.
As for the spoken word, it is initially a substitute for the gesture, for the
bodily attitude and bodily expression that precede the verbalized sound.
When the child says ‘‘mama,’’ it is not merely the word that means, say, put
me in the chair, but the child’s whole behavior at that moment, his reaching
out for the chair, trying to hold it, etc. In contrast to the egocentric speech
that goes inward, verbalized speech goes outward; the child uses it as
a method of pointing. It is the fusion of this inward speech and developing
outward speech that finally comprises human thought in its ordinary, basic
expression. We appreciate from this viewpoint the growing psychological
realization, based explicitly on Vygotsky’s work, that thinking is an uncon-
scious process in the first instance.26 Even our conscious speech, the psycho-
logical community has come to recognize, is pervaded by unconscious
mechanisms to the degree that it is tied to our thinking.
With regard to the role of separation in all of this, we must note that sym-
bol formation (or word formation) arises from the infant’s shared experience
with the mother. The common act of ‘‘referential pointing’’ starts with the
mother’s invitation but soon leads to the child inviting the mother to join
in the contemplation of some object. This marks the beginning of what psy-
chologists call ‘‘intellectual stereoscopy’’ in which the objectification of the
world is dependent on social interaction. The child names things to someone,
and the loving feedback he receives becomes the incentive for naming further
things. The whole idea of twoness and separateness arises from this mutuality.
Thus, the presence and absence of the mother and of important physical
objects in the child’s world play motivational roles in the development of rep-
resentational thought. In fact, the ability to recognize mother, to conceptual-
ize her as mother, is goaded into existence by the need to cope with her
absence, or loss. The feeling of loss becomes the motive for ‘‘acquiring the
capacity to represent absent objects or to represent objects regardless of their
presence or absence.’’ When the baby names the absent object, he predicates
it on the basis of its former presence: thus, mommy gone. The same act can
predicate a future presence on a current absence. The ideas of gone and
mommy are linked and placed in relation to one another. The whole business
of linguistic predication is thus associated with the problem of separation
from the caretaker. Again, as the child links up mommy and gone, he creates
a dependent relationship between two ideas that substitutes for each idea’s
dependency on actual experience. This gives the child the power to recall
the mother at will. Symbolic representation (as in play) comes to comprise
a way back to the missing object of one’s emotions.27
Because the verbal representation of the thing is the culmination of the
symbolic process, the word is the magical tie that reunites us with the all-
important figure(s) of infancy and childhood. It is not merely that maternal
stimulation during the time of language development is necessary for the
fulfillment of the child’s potential; our symbolic seeing is charged with the
emotional energy that went into our life and death struggle to maintain our
connection to the caregiver at the same time we were giving her up. Through
the early imperfections of mothering we learn to grip the world with our
bodies, with our tense anticipation (the time sense). Through the crises of
separation, which continue to transpire after the early period, we learn to grip
the world with our minds, with our symbols, with our words. The mirror
phase of infancy eventually gives way to the presentational mirror of a mind
that has separation on its mind. The very running on of our thoughts in
ordinary consciousness becomes a link to the figures of the past. To express
the matter in terms that recall the context of our discussion explicitly, because
the word becomes the child’s chief tool for ‘‘matching mental states,’’28 the
word also becomes the child’s chief tool for preserving the ‘‘companionship’’
from which his very selfhood arises. Thus, language as the means of
approaching God harbors perforce the unconscious aims and wishes
of the early period as they inform the supplications of the adult. In the
universe of religious behavior, the word always reaches back to its primitive
communicative origins.
Brain, Mind, and Religion

Of overriding significance here is the extent to which the psychosocial
picture presented contextually has come to be supported in recent years by
neurobiological investigations of the developing mind-brain. What occurs
early on as the infant-child interacts with the parental provider is not registered,
or internalized, in some vague, ‘‘psychological’’ way that may or may not be
‘‘there’’ depending upon how one chooses to ‘‘view’’ the matter. On the con-
trary, what we are calling ‘‘the basic biological situation’’ is registered physio-
logically, at the synaptic level itself, to become the neurobiological
foundation of human perception in general and the essential inspiration of
the religious realm in particular. Religious narrative and ritual, the human
creature’s distinctive planetary signature, spring directly from the interactive
nurturing that dominates the early stages of our existence. ‘‘Human connec-
tions shape the neural connections from which the mind emerges,’’ writes
Siegel in The Developing Mind. While the ‘‘structure’’ and the ‘‘function’’ of
the ‘‘brain’’ are ‘‘directly shaped’’ by ‘‘interpersonal experience throughout
life,’’ such ‘‘shaping’’ is ‘‘most crucial during the early years of childhood.’’
Different ‘‘patterns’’ of ‘‘child-parent attachment’’ are ‘‘associated’’ with dif-
fering ‘‘physiological responses’’ and with ‘‘ways of seeing the world.’’ It is
the ‘‘communication of emotion’’ that serves as the ‘‘primary means’’ by
which such experiences of ‘‘attachment’’ mold ‘‘the developing mind.’’ In this

way, the ‘‘repeated patterns of children’s interactions with their caregivers’’
(the basic biological situation of asking and receiving) become ‘‘remembered’’
in the ‘‘various modalities of memory’’ and ‘‘directly shape not just what
children recall,’’ but ‘‘how the representational processes develop. Behavior,
emotion, perceptions, sensations, and models of others,’’ Siegel notes, ‘‘are
engrained by experiences that occur before children have autobiographical
memorial processes available to them. These implicit elements of memory
also later influence the structure of autobiographical narratives.’’ For count-
less millions of human beings, needless to say, one’s ‘‘autobiographical narra-
tive’’ becomes interwoven inextricably with one’s ‘‘religious narrative,’’ the
timeless, traditional, cross-cultural ‘‘myth’’ that captures the manner in which
individuals ‘‘see the world’’ in the widest, most encompassing sense.29
At the center of the spiritual ‘‘narrative’’ to which we are devoting ourselves
here resides the image of a loving, care-giving Parent-God Who devotes
Himself, among other things, to watching over his vulnerable, dependent
children, the human flock he has engendered and for which he is ultimately
responsible. A genuine understanding of Christianity resides in the conscious
comprehension of the manner in which its ‘‘core narrative’’ or ‘‘core myth’’ is
‘‘wired’’ directly into and emanates directly from the human mind-brain as it
unconsciously and wishfully projects the implicit memory of one’s early
‘‘attachment experience’’ into the ‘‘present’’ reality in which one discovers
himself. The narrative with the loving Parent-God at its center is the mne-
monic retrieval of the early biological pattern of attachment through which
one found or tried to find his emotional security and his physical safety in
the world. The upshot? Christianity becomes an ongoing attachment narra-
tive designed to enhance one’s inward stability, one’s calmness, one’s happi-
ness, one’s vitality, in one’s always dangerous and always unpredictable
surroundings. It serves the straightforward evolutional purpose of ensuring
and increasing the effectiveness of one’s interactions with the environment
by ensuring and increasing one’s inward psychological equilibrium, in refer-
ence particularly to the abhorrence of feeling isolated and alone, ‘‘separate’’
in the psychical sense we discovered in Mahler and others a few pages earlier.
‘‘God is love’’ means God inherits mnemonically, as a synaptically rooted
projective entity, the primal love of the early time; He preserves one’s
attachment to the parental figure as one goes off, inevitably, ‘‘on his own.’’
The attachment pattern of the early period is ‘‘mapped’’ onto the religious
narrative of an ever-receding future—the unknown. Thus, the God the
Christian ostensibly ‘‘discovers’’ at the cultural level turns out to be the ‘‘God’’
he unconsciously remembers at the level of his internalizing brain.
To express the whole business a tad more technically, ‘‘experience early in

life,’’ asserts Siegel, is ‘‘especially crucial in organizing the way the basic struc-
tures of the brain develop.’’ The ‘‘brain’s development’’ is an ‘‘experience-
dependent process’’ in which ‘‘experience activates certain pathways in
the brain, strengthening existing connections and creating new ones.’’30
As Donald O. Hebb has axiomatically and famously expressed the matter,
‘‘neurons that fire together wire together.’’31 What are ‘‘stored,’’ observes
Siegel, ‘‘are the probabilities of neurons’ firing in a specific pattern—not
actual things.’’ Thus, the ‘‘neural net’’ remembers even though the memory
itself may not be consciously and explicitly brought to the illuminated center
of the subject’s focused attention (p. 27). As for the neural ‘‘mechanisms’’
involved in our characteristic way of ‘‘encoding’’ our significant experiences
into retrievable ‘‘packets’’ or ‘‘engrams,’’ the ‘‘amygdala’’ is believed ‘‘to be
involved with imparting the emotional significance’’ to objects and ‘‘linking’’
them to ‘‘other memory systems’’ initially ‘‘imparted by the hippocampus’’
but then ‘‘subserved by other complex cerebral pathways potentially involving
many hundreds of thousands if not millions of synapses.’’ Just as the ‘‘proper-
ties of objects’’ are ‘‘synthesized convergently by different pathways,’’ we can
‘‘surmise that the historical and emotional significance of objects are likewise
synthesized,’’ yet also ‘‘edited, updated, and revised’’ based upon ‘‘new
experiences.’’ The more complex ‘‘associative experiential properties and
cues’’ may be ‘‘attached to critical objects in the environment, such as parents,
siblings, and even the concept of oneself.’’ Our lives, then, are ‘‘filled with
implicit influences, the origins and impacts of which we may or may not be
aware’’ (p. 49). Affectively charged, ‘‘value-laden’’ memories are ‘‘made more
likely to be reactivated’’ among the ‘‘myriad of infinite engrams laid down’’
as we move ahead. The early period is ‘‘encoded’’ in the brain, and our exis-
tence is ‘‘shaped’’ by the ‘‘reactivations of implicit memory, which lack a sense
that something is being recalled. We simply enter these engrained states’’ and
undergo them as ‘‘the reality of our present experience’’ (pp. 32–33). What
William James calls ‘‘the varieties of religious experience’’ offer us the most
familiar, striking exemplifications of such neurally rooted ‘‘entrances’’ and
such engrained, concealed ‘‘presences.’’ Through an endless variety of
retrieval cues, from supplications to oratorios, from stained-glass windows
to sacred robes, from the interpersonal crises of divorce or illness or death,
to the physical dangers lurking in proverbial foxholes, and on and on forever,
we ‘‘enter’’ unconsciously the putative spiritual domain and experience the
vital, sustaining, soothing attachment of our parental internalizations, as they
were originally taken in and as they are modified and complexified by our
continuous, wishful enhancements over time. The interpersonal origins of
our mind-brain trigger the primal inclination to make the universe in which
we abide interpersonal, too.
Attractions and Addictions

The neurobiological approach to an ‘‘attractor state’’ helps us along nicely
as we strive to disclose further the unconscious origin of the Christian’s incli-
nation to ‘‘people’’ the world with spirits, and, in particular, with a supernatu-
ral Parent-God. ‘‘Reinforced patterns’’ of ‘‘activation,’’ writes Siegel, ‘‘are
called ‘attractor states.’ ’’ They consist in the ‘‘activity’’ of each ‘‘component’’
of a ‘‘system’’ at a ‘‘given point in time.’’ As experience unfolds in the light
of a person’s ‘‘values,’’ specific ‘‘brain states’’ become ‘‘more probable,’’ and
eventually more ‘‘engrained’’ within the activity of the ‘‘system’’ as a whole.
It is ‘‘emotional response,’’ observes Siegel, that serves as the system’s building
block and that ensures the ‘‘neural firing,’’ or the ‘‘activation,’’ of the con-
certed ‘‘state.’’ As states become engrained through repeated expression and
emotional intensity, they become ‘‘more likely to be activated.’’ And when a
‘‘state of mind’’ is continually and powerfully aroused, it is prone to configure
into ‘‘a deeply engrained attractor state.’’ Finally, declares Siegel, in the crucial
words upon which our line of reasoning rests, ‘‘repeated states of activation at
the critical early period of development shape the structure of neural circuits
which then form the functional basis for enduring states of mind within the
individual.’’32 Accordingly, what transpires between offspring and caregiver
during the early period comes gradually to comprise not merely one neuro-
biological ‘‘state’’ among many, but the central, enduring ‘‘attractor state’’ of
our ongoing lives. The basic biological situation gives rise at the implicit,
unconscious level to the perceptual, emotional ‘‘scheme’’ from which ema-
nate our deepest emotional longings and perceptual inclinations. How could
it be otherwise? For many crucial months and years our physical and mental
survival depend entirely on the caregiver; thus the affective intensity of this
‘‘critical’’ early stage is colossal; we attach ourselves to our provider with
utterly spontaneous, unabated ardor; nothing is held back; our needs for
nourishment, for care, for love, are ‘‘activated’’ continuously, over and over
again, thousands upon thousands of times, to become rooted synaptically in
our brains; our emotional ‘‘values’’ are established in an indelible, permanent
manner that seeks fulfillment forever after along lines that affectively recall
the initial, primal interaction. In short, we internalize into our developing
minds early on the instinct-driven, affective ‘‘pattern’’ that will govern our
behavior as we relinquish the immediate familial unit and move into the
wider world of culture, including, of course, culture’s religious dimension.
The ‘‘truth’’ of the Christian narrative with the loving Parent-God at the
center is confirmed implicitly, unconsciously through a primed, fully readied
‘‘attractor state’’ that resides at the foundation of the believer’s interpersonally
sculpted, interpersonally wired brain. He is not simply attracted to the reli-
gious narrative to which he is eventually exposed; the system is completely
dynamic: it is he who also attracts the narrative to himself, yanking it in,
absorbing it, mapping it onto the model, the scheme, upon which he’s been
relying all along. The attractor state within him is as eager for confirmation
of its core perception as those who offer the narrative to him are eager for
his acceptance of it and his entry into the flock.
It is not only Christianity, needless to say, but a wide variety of human par-
ticipations that are linked firmly to the basic biological situation: our ongoing
interpersonal relationships at both the individual and group level (spouse and
family); our national loyalty and identification with ‘‘motherland’’ and
‘‘fatherland,’’ including the ‘‘leader’’ or ‘‘chief ’’; our absorption in music,
art, literature; and, of course, our inclination to make gods out of other insti-
tutions such as science or philosophy. However, because the Christian
domain is imponderable, invisible, entirely unsupported by what we term
empirical criteria, because for millions of people everywhere mental and emo-
tional stability depend significantly on their Christian ties, and finally because
Christianity must compete with other emergent systems and brain states that
come into play as an individual develops over time, Christianity’s humble,
worldly task is to reinforce, to strengthen, to deepen the participant’s original,
brain-based convictions through steady, even continuous exposure to ritual
and to word from early childhood onward. The neurons that fired together
and wired together to create the primal attractor state during the early period
must be regularly activated in the proper devotional context to ensure the
continuation of the supernatural attachment that emerged on initial exposure
to official, sacred narrative. To put it another way, the worldly task of institu-
tional Christianity is to provide the flock with the inspiration to continue its
mapping of the primal, core experience of attachment to the parental figure
onto the orthodox version of the substitute Parent-God. Unless this happens,
both flock and earthly shepherds are apt to disappear. Accordingly, to employ
a familiar example in illustration, when we hear the gospel choir on TV sing-
ing, ‘‘Jesus came and found me/And put His arms around me,’’ we detect the
primal attractor state of union with the biological caregiver humming along
quietly beneath the mapped-on surface expression of the core fantasy. Surely
we begin to spy, now, the full emotive source of Winifred Gallagher’s observa-
tion that ‘‘mother and offspring live in a biological state that has much in
common with addiction. When they are parted, the infant does not just miss
its mother; it experiences a physical and psychological withdrawal from a host

of her sensory stimuli, not unlike the plight of a heroin addict who goes cold
turkey.’’33 The building block of the attractor state, as I’ve suggested in
passing on a couple of occasions, is affect, or emotions, feelings of attachment
and love that reach all the way down to the core of the developing self, or
alternatively, to the neurobiological foundations of the developing mind-
brain. As the Christian enters the putative supernatural realm and spontane-
ously shifts toward the basic biological situation, now outwardly projected
in the ‘‘sacred’’ image of Parent-God and filial worshiper, he does so ardently,
passionately, reverently, needfully, in search of his primal, foundational
connection, his felicity, his security, his stability—in a word, his affective
‘‘fix.’’ The gravitational power of Christianity emanates from precisely this
psychological direction.
More on Infantile Amnesia

That the decisive, determining source of our most powerful, compelling
emotions as people should be inaccessible to our direct apprehension during
the entire course of our lives can be described only as one of the most extraor-
dinary and defining aspects of our fundamental humanity. For years as little
ones we passionately and unceasingly interact with our caregivers; for years we
depend on them for everything, including our very survival. Yet we cannot
explicitly recall these events; we cannot ‘‘find’’ them mnemonically, no matter
how long and how hard we try. As far as conscious perception of our emotional
roots is concerned, the early period has simply vanished from view. This is not
because infants and young children can’t remember things. On the contrary,
from nearly the beginning, and equally for both sexes, infantile memory is
robust. ‘‘Studies on infant memory carried out at the University of Toronto,’’
writes Richard M. Restak, ‘‘suggest that infants may remember more about
events than, only a few years ago, the most optimistic researcher would have
thought possible.’’34 Nor is it solely in a ‘‘wide’’ or ‘‘general’’ sense that memory
emerges as an integral feature of our early mental functioning, with past
experience exerting an effect on current behavior. As Restak observes, infants
remember in a fashion that makes plain their powerful ‘‘associative’’ capacities:
mother’s ‘‘face’’ goes with mother’s ‘‘voice’’; this particular ‘‘object’’ calls that
particular ‘‘object’’ to mind; the baby is ‘‘storing information’’; the ‘‘association
tracts’’ in his developing mind-brain are open for business—toward the
inception of his days and, of course, forever after (p. 169).
Let’s look further into infantile amnesia now with an eye to distinguishing
sharply the quality of early (or implicit) memory and later, autobiographical
(or explicit) memory. The distinction will lead us nicely to a number of

compelling realizations. ‘‘Infantile amnesia,’’ writes Elizabeth Johnston,
refers to the general inability of people to remember specific events from the
early years of their lives. On the basis of both free recall studies (What is your
earliest memory?) and studies for memories of notable and datable early events
(the birth of a sibling, hospitalization, the Kennedy assassination) psychologists
have concluded that there are very few memories from before the age three
years. The average age of the earliest memory reported is three-and-a-half, with
a small but consistent gender difference indicating that females reported earlier
memories.
Johnston goes on,
If people are asked to recall episodes from the entire life span the number
reported before age eight falls off sharply in comparison to other periods. This
indicates that it is not the age of the memories per se that accounts for their rel-
ative paucity, rather it is the life period that they occur within (the earliest years)
that is sparsely represented in long term autobiographical memory.35
To apply accurately an understanding of memory to an understanding of reli-

gious belief, then, we must employ what investigators currently term a ‘‘dual
memory system’’ that characterizes the nature of our memorial capacity from
the inception to maturity. On the one hand, we have the ‘‘non-verbal, image-
based system,’’ with the following characteristics as presented in Johnston:
‘‘1) primitive; 2) present from birth; 3) addressable by situational or affective
cues; 4) contains fragmentary information; 5) memories expressed through
images, behaviors, or emotions; 6) learned routines; 7) generalized past expe-
riences not linked to specific events; and 8) accessed through reinstatement.’’
On the other hand, we have the ‘‘socially accessible system’’ as follows:
‘‘1) emerges slowly throughout the preschool years; 2) addressable through
intentional retrieval efforts; 3) personally experienced events; 4) encoded in
narrative form; 5) actively thought about or processed; 6) can be accessed
and recounted in response to social demands; 7) contains information spe-
cific to time and place; 8) develops with the acquisition of language’’ (p. 3).
When we put these ‘‘systems’’ together, of course, we begin to perceive the
whole mind-brain at work—not merely in some general, theoretical sense
that floats about in the realm of pure ideas, but in relation to specifically
the substance and the expression of Christian belief. We perceive the image-
based nature of the creed, the depictions of sacred materials contained in
sacred texts and sacred objects (He walked upon the waters; the Madonna
cradles the dying Jesus in her arms). We perceive the endless affective cues in
an endless variety of ritual contexts (let us kneel in our helplessness before our
Almighty Creator); the memories contained in emotions and behaviors (your
Heavenly Father loves you; bow your heads humbly in recognition of His
blessings, in gratitude for your daily bread, which He provides); the learned
routines that come to comprise a sizable portion of one’s Christian religious
life (the ceremonies of the service, the holiday celebrations, and the garb);
the generalized past experiences not linked to specific events (this accident is
tragic, but we cannot fathom fully the ways of our loving God [anymore than
we could fathom what our parents were doing early on]); the access through
reinstatement (let us open our Bibles once again and read of His wondrous
works). One might continue in a similar vein forever. Indeed, even those
aspects of Christianity about which we ‘‘think’’ discursively, even those aspects
that are intentional, conscious, accessed in response to social demand, are
themselves based ultimately upon our early experience, our early, internal-
ized, unconscious associations that give such ‘‘higher’’ aspects their compel-
ling, affective power, their emotional bite as it were. When we ‘‘sin,’’ for
example, we undergo separation from our Lord, Who is unconsciously linked
to the caregiver; we experience once more the threat (and the torment) of pri-
mal, foundational loss, what Dante calls in Inferno, ‘‘the eternal isolation of
the soul.’’ When we love others as ourselves in response to Christ’s directive,
we bring to others that primal, foundational love we internalized in response
to the timely ministrations of our parental provider. Our ‘‘conscience’’ as we
feel it in wrongdoing, and as we express it in our compassionate concern for
the welfare of others, is rooted in our deepest affective core, in the part of
us that we informally call ‘‘the heart,’’ that wordless region from which comes
the expression of our basic emotional nature, shaped in the first years of life.
As for the issue of why the early period is lost to our explicit recollection,
there is no universally accepted, definitive answer because the question (for
obvious reasons) does not easily lend itself to empiric, observational investi-
gation. Generally accepted and ubiquitous in the literature, however, is the
notion that what we have called the nonverbal, image-based system becomes
increasingly unavailable to direct apprehension as it simply gives way to
the emergent, brain-based modes of recollection linked to the socially acces-
sible system. As we mature neurologically, the later configuration is the one
we are fated to use when we employ our will and our capacity to remember.
The answer that reigns in the literature, then, is Piagetian: an early ‘‘scheme’’
of cerebral functioning gradually yields to, and is finally absorbed into, a later
‘‘scheme.’’ As Johnston expresses the matter, ‘‘The inaccessibility of early
childhood memories [is] due to a disjunction between the earliest and later
modes of processing information. . . . While there is no abrupt neurological

watershed corresponding to the offset of infantile amnesia, there is good
reason to believe that neurological maturity must be one of the factors that
limits early memory’’ (pp. 1–2). Thus the way we remember things changes,
leaving the socially accessible system ‘‘on top,’’ or ‘‘in the light,’’ and the
nonverbal, image-based system ‘‘below ground,’’ or ‘‘in the dark.’’ We have
in all this a provocative and relatively straightforward method of talking
about a highly disputatious topic in modern (and postmodern) awareness:
the unconscious mind, an entity that each person possesses whether or not
he’s been ‘‘repressing’’ specific and presumably stress-laden aspects of his
thought and behavior.36
We come now to a major consideration. As the early, nonverbal memorial
mode gives way to the later, verbal, socially accessible system, it is ‘‘narrative
memory’’ that bears the weight of the past and begins to influence the shape of
the future. ‘‘Infantile amnesia,’’ states Johnston, ‘‘is overcome through the
linguistic sharing of memories with other. . . . Various pieces of empirical
evidence support the idea of a later onset of narrative memory’’ (pp. 3–4).
By way of illustration, Johnston offers us, among several items, the following
representational vignette:
Tessler studied 3 year olds and their mothers on a visit to a natural history
museum. She found that none of the children remembered any of the objects
that they viewed in the museum if they had not talked about them with their
mothers. Mother’s talk alone was not facilitative, nor was a child’s mention
alone effective in leading to subsequent remembering. Creating a narrative
together cemented particular objects in memory.
And then, summarizing the matter for us neatly, Johnston writes, ‘‘Through
sharing memories with others language becomes available as a means of
reinstating memory’’ (p. 4). Johnston calls this the ‘‘Vygotskian model’’ refer-
ring to the famous Russian linguist, Vygotsky, whose work we explored a few
pages earlier. The point is, the two major narratives, or stories, that come to
comprise the ‘‘world’’ or the ‘‘universe’’ of the developing person, namely,
the familial narrative and the religious narrative, are destined to inherit, to
contain, to absorb, and to harbor, precisely the early, preverbal experience
that resides at the core of that person’s mind-brain. The affect, the perception,
the attachments and longings of the early period as they are steadily internal-
ized during life’s first years, become the human ‘‘stuff ’’ out of which the reli-
gious realm is fashioned and toward which religious practice is finally
directed. ‘‘If the infant’s environment provides frequent opportunities for
reactivation,’’ notes Johnston, ‘‘then theoretically an individual’s early
experiences could be remembered over a lifetime’’ (p. 3). Memory turns out
to be an ‘‘emergent property’’ of the ‘‘cue and the engram’’ (p. 3), and it is
precisely the ‘‘engram’’ of the first relationship, or what we have called the
attractor state as grounded in the basic biological situation, at which Chris-
tianity aims its traditional or sacred ‘‘cues,’’ the substance of its doctrinal
and ritualistic enactments.
We must ask ourselves, what is there in the young person’s mind-brain after
all to accede with emotion to Christianity’s ‘‘story,’’ to the narrative with the
loving Parent-God at its center, if not the immediate context of the young
person’s life? Clearly, there is nothing else. Equally, as the familial narrative
takes shape and the young person increasingly apprehends the inevitable psy-
chic (if not physical) separation that looms as its culmination, the Christian
narrative begins to assume a central, affective position in the psychic
economy of the developing individual. While he must relinquish eventually
the actual parent, he can retain forever the mysterious Parent-God, the super-
natural surrogate whose attractive power emanates unconsciously from that
very mnemonic place from which the attachment to the actual parent initially
arose. As he becomes a predominantly verbal, narrative creature as opposed to
a ‘‘primitive,’’ preverbal creature, lo and behold, there is his religious narrative
to greet him, to offer him another loving, protective Parent, another Guide,
another Nourisher, another Omnipotent Companion and Ally Whose hand
he may clutch as he proceeds upon his increasingly separate way. At the affec-
tive, perceptual, synaptic level of his existence the Christian narrative presents
itself as another version of and the direct successor to exactly what he has just
experienced interactionally as a little one; and it derives its compelling power,
its compelling timeless appeal, from precisely the direction of his implicit
recollection: he can’t see the realistic, empirical link between the two stages,
the two systems; all he can do is feel the connection inside; the unconscious
associations impel him to judge the religious narrative as ‘‘true.’’ In other
words, the narrative implicitly confirms what he’s just experienced as a person;
it returns him to his familiar internalized reality at his emergent verbal level
of understanding, and this fills him with the irresistible sensation that he is
what he is, that no break exists in his being, that no separation will snatch
him away from his inward emotional reality, or world. In the neurobiological
terms that recall the early stages of our discussion, the Christian narrative
permits him to map his early experience onto his ongoing and increasingly
separate life. Reason, needless to say, is not there yet to question the assump-
tions of his supernatural outlook. He simply projects his way happily to the
spiritual universe that is offered to him by his directional elders. Where the
arms of the actual biological caregiver held him in the beginning, the arms
of sweet Jesus hold him now. As the fleshly body of the mother recedes, the
spiritual body of the Deity appears mentally to take her place. The believer will
not be alone. With the help of society’s institutional promptings, and with
the assistance of his capacities to imagine, to play, to create substitutes for the
treasured caregiver he must gradually relinquish as he grows, his mind-brain
will accord him just what his mind-brain requires for his peace of mind.
The religious story to which Christians are introduced as the early, prever-
bal stage gives way to the narrative style of perception is all-encompassing,
all-satisfying, completely reassuring—that is, if they stick to the rules and
dutifully propitiate their Parental Provider. They are allied with omnipotence
once again; the all-powerful parent returns in the form of the Parent-God.
They will live forever, be loved forever, be guided forever, be ‘‘housed’’ forever
in the mansions of their benign, supernatural Benefactor, their Shepherd,
their Savior and Spiritual Nourisher. All their questions will be answered;
all their wonderings about the nature of Nature will be met with some sort
of explanation, thus allaying anxiety over the shape of the unknown. Their
religious narrative has, like all good dramatic tales, a beginning, a middle,
and an end. They discover their provenance, their duties in mortal life, and
their destination upon mortal life’s conclusion. They can continue to ques-
tion and to wonder as much as they like, of course, but they don’t have to
wonder and question; they can rest content in the reassurances of doctrine
whenever they wish to do so. All who seek shall find. All who submit shall
be comforted. All who kneel to their loving Parent-God shall be uplifted, over
and over again, each time they supplicate, forever more.
Magic
Anthropological attempts to fathom magical behavior commenced in ear-
nest during the course of the nineteenth century and culminated in Sir James
G. Frazer’s monumental study, The Golden Bough, originally published in
England in 1890. The century as a whole was given to what we may regard as
an ‘‘us and them’’ approach to things, an approach that crept unhindered into
many fields of intellectual endeavor, including anthropology and comparative
religion. Over here were enlightened, contemporary, Christianized Europeans
of good social and economic standing, and over there were pagans and
primitives past and present, prone to quaint, crude, formulaic attempts
at controlling a world they didn’t understand scientifically (an exception
was sometimes made for the ancient Hebrews, one of whom was, after all,
Jesus Christ). Primitive magic was goal directed (or ‘‘efficacious’’) supersti-
tion; it was tied to power-charged objects and spells wielded by all manner
of purblind necromancers, from exotic tribal chiefs to lowly, credulous

villagers mumbling over navel-strings and afterbirths. Frazer’s towering
book, which still repays investigation, harbored in its core a loyalty to the
progressive or perhaps evolutional notions of the day: humankind was
culturally, intellectually, spiritually on the move, from the stage of primitive
magic to the stage of religion (a refinement of primitive magic), to the stage of
rational, scientific understanding that for some of Frazer’s contemporaries was
compatible with refined religion (the old Baconian ideal of the New Atlantis)
and that for others (say, Freud and his circle) was not.
Although Frazer’s progressive vision was historically and culturally prob-
lematic, to put it mildly, it became (and remains) widely popular in England,
on the Continent, and in North America. Yet that vision also nourished fierce
controversies over the nature of enlightened religion, controversies that
proved useful to those who took up magic and religion during the course of
the twentieth century. For example, the famous Scottish historian-
anthropologist Robertson Smith (1842–1896), one of Frazer’s intellectual
mentors, opined that certain denominations, such as Catholicism, were more
reluctant than other denominations, such as Protestantism, to jettison their
magical baggage and join the parade toward refinement. Further, he was
inclined to express this view in his well-attended university lectures.
‘‘He could show with unrivalled erudition,’’ writes Mary Douglas, that in
the course of history ‘‘the ideals of Christianity . . . had moved from Catholic
to Protestant forms.’’37 Needless to say, such scholarly conclusions might
easily lead not only to bitter, partisan debate but to genuine confusion as to
what exactly religion is, distinguished from its putative forerunner, primitive
magic. As I just suggested, twentieth-century anthropologists took the hint.
Although comparative studies of magic and religion are still disputatious,
and will no doubt always be so given the deeply personal nature of religious
belief, a general (as opposed to universal) consensus currently exists: religion
and magic are closely affined, even connected inextricably, and it is more
helpful, more productive of truth, to collapse the old dichotomy (including
its ‘‘us-them’’ component) than to shore it up. Writes Mary Douglas in
Natural Symbols, ‘‘Sacraments are one thing, magic another; taboos are one
thing, sin another. The first thing is to break through the spiky verbal hedges
that arbitrarily insulate one set of human experiences (ours) from another set
(theirs).’’38 She continues,
Sacramental efficacy works internally; magical efficacy works externally. But this
difference, even at the theological level, is less great than it seems. For if the the-
ologian remembers to take account of the doctrine of the Incarnation, magical
enough in itself, and the even more magical doctrine of the Resurrection and of
how its power is channeled through the sacraments, he cannot make such a tidy
distinction between sacramental and magical efficacy. Then there is the popular
magicality of Christianity. A candle lit to St. Anthony for finding a lost object is
magical, as is also a St. Christopher medal used to prevent accidents . . . Both
sacramental and magical behavior are expressions of ritualism.
And finally, ‘‘I see no advantage . . . in making any distinction between magi-
cal and sacramental’’ (pp. 8–9).
Douglas renders the matter even more succinctly perhaps in her Purity and
Danger: ‘‘The division between religion and magic’’ is ‘‘ill-considered.’’
Indeed, ‘‘the more intractable puzzles in comparative religion arise because
human experience has been thus wrongly divided.’’39 Such passages not only
go to the heart of the matter, they allow us to witness firsthand the kind
of professional insight that has prompted The HarperCollins Dictionary of
Religion to present magic and religion as ultimately ‘‘compatible’’ for
‘‘twentieth-century scholars,’’ or the Penguin Dictionary of Religions to declare
that ‘‘magic shades off into religion,’’ or The Oxford Dictionary of World
Religions to assert that for present-day anthropologists magic is ‘‘embedded
in religion’’ where it ‘‘acts as an organization of context and meaning,’’
or the Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions to view the notion
that magic and religion are integrally related as a twentieth-century common-
place.40 Here are John S. and David Boyer Noss summing things up for us
temperately in A History of the World’s Religions:
Magic may be loosely defined as an endeavor through utterance of set words,

or the performance of set acts, or both, to control or bend the powers of
the world’s to one’s will. It cannot be wholly divorces from religion, . . . but it is
discernibly present when the emphasis is placed on forcing things to happen
rather than asking that they do.41
Does this imply that magic may be covertly present in prayer, where
the emphasis is placed on asking rather than forcing? I believe that it does,
as I will soon try to establish. As for the us-them thinking that characterized
Victorian approaches to magic and religion, it has bequeathed to us, once
again in Mary Douglas’s words, ‘‘a false distinction between primitive and
modern cultures.’’ It is a ‘‘mistake to suppose that there can be religion which
is all interior, with no rules, no liturgy, no external signs of inward states. As with
society, so with religion, external form is the condition of its existence.’’
The proper model for appreciating ‘‘primitive ritual,’’ observes Douglas, is
not ‘‘the absurd Ali Baba’’ but the modern psychologist. It is modern
psychology precisely that can provide us with ‘‘pertinent suggestions’’ for the
understanding of ‘‘religious beliefs.’’42 Surely the great French anthropologist
Marcel Mauss was thinking along similar lines when, several decades before
the appearance of Professor Douglas’s writings, he declared in A General
Theory of Magic, ‘‘In magic, as in religion, it is the unconscious ideas that
are the active ones.’’43 Accordingly, the old us-them dichotomy must be
retired from active service lest it wreak still more havoc on our comprehen-
sion of human behavior. Let’s give Susanne K. Langer the last word on the
subject: ‘‘Once we recognize a truly primitive trait of human experience in a
naı̈ve form, we usually end up by finding it still operative in our own subjec-
tive experience.’’44 We have far too much history behind us as millennial
Westerners to doubt the veracity of that sentence.
Frazer provides us with a useful, preliminary framework in The Golden
Bough: ‘‘Magic rests everywhere,’’ he remarks, ‘‘on two fundamental princi-
ples: first, that like produces like, effect resembling cause; second, that things
which have once been in contact continue ever afterwards to act on each other.’’
The ‘‘former principle’’ is tied to homeopathic or imitative magic, the ‘‘latter’’
to the contagious variety.45 Let’s open with contagion, ‘‘the most familiar
example’’ of which is the ‘‘magical sympathy’’ that is ‘‘supposed to exist
between man and any severed portion of his person, such as his hair or nails;
so that whoever gets possession of human hair or nails may work his will, at
any distance, upon the person from whom they were cut.’’ Frazer goes on:
Other parts which are commonly believed to remain in a sympathetic union

with the body, after the physical connexion has been severed, are the navel-
string and the afterbirth, including the placenta. So intimate, indeed, is the
union conceived to be, that the fortunes of the individual for good or evil
throughout life are often supposed to be bound up with one or other of these
portions of his person, so that if his navel-string or afterbirth is preserved and
properly treated, he will be prosperous; whereas if it be injured or lost, he will
suffer accordingly.
Again, ‘‘magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically not only through

his clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through the impressions left
by his body in sand and earth. In particular, it is a worldwide superstition that
by injuring footprints you injure the feet that made them’’ (pp. 62–63, 68).
We may think of contagion generally as a transfer of power by contact or
by proximity, and as a species of magic that is frequently associated with
sacred objects and with pollution.46 In illustration of homeopathic or imita-
tive magic, the idea that like produces like, Frazer cites ‘‘the familiar application’’
in which an attempt is made to injure or to destroy an enemy ‘‘by injuring or
destroying an image of him,’’ or, in the ‘‘amiable’’ sphere of ‘‘winning love,’’ an

arrow is dispatched into ‘‘the heart of a clay image,’’ thus ‘‘securing a woman’s
affection’’ (pp. 35, 40). Here magic rests overwhelmingly on a fallacious
understanding of causality: like produces like. If thunder accompanies rain,
then to beget rain during a drought, we can beat drums and roll boulders
noisily down hills; if fertility produces crops, and an eventual harvest, then
we can copulate in the newly sown fields and transfer our sexual energies to
the precious, unpredictable seeds; if fish must open their mouths and swallow
our hooks or we don’t catch them, then we can open our own mouths in
imitation of the fish and thus induce the effect we desire: like begets like.
Frazer notes that many examples of homeopathic magic are ‘‘supposed to
operate at long distance. Whatever doubts science may entertain as to the
possibility of action at a distance, magic has none; faith in telepathy is one
of its basic principles’’ (p. 46). We might bear this in mind henceforward
as a kind of telepathy is often presupposed in prayer, and in two directions:
we can detect or perceive the presence of the ambient Almighty, and the
Almighty can read our hearts, indeed can know precisely what is in them
before we have uttered our supplication.
Edward Tylor’s famous ‘‘minimum definition of religion’’ as a ‘‘belief in
Spiritual Beings’’ places the emphasis upon the mind, upon concurrence with
an all-determining conception, or idea.47 For this writer, and for other writers
as well,48 Tylor’s definition points us firmly in the right direction. Belief in
spiritual beings is the great global agent that distinguishes the religious from
the nonreligious, fundamentally and forever. Those who believe in God, to
express the matter familiarly, are at least minimally religious; those who do
not believe in God are not, even though they may consider themselves reli-
gious in some popular, secular sense that generally means ‘‘in awe of the
galaxies,’’ or ‘‘fascinated by the mysteries of nature’’ of some such. The believers
are potentially religious in the full sense, capable of moving utterly into the
religious sphere if they are not there already. The nonbelievers, by contrast,
must hold back; they just can’t commit until a major shift in attitude occurs.
So be it. For Émile Durkheim, however, the emphasis on mind, intellect,
assent, and concurrence draws the understanding of religion away from the
realm in which it properly and supremely belongs, namely, the social realm,
society, with its laws, rules, morals, mores, customs, and traditions—its
collective, organized institutions. Durkheim did not believe the psychology
of the individual could account for the emergence of societal forms.49 It helps
enormously in grasping Durkheim’s view to remember that he was not
concerned with the ultimate origin of spiritual beings. Who knows where
they ultimately come from? Who knows when, or how, or why they
ultimately appear in human thought and culture. Who has removed the mists
of time, looked into the distant past, and seen? For Durkheim, religion is
there; it is a reality one discovers on the planet, either directly as one travels
about, or indirectly as one reads and ponders. Having discovered it, what
one finds in turn (Durkheim concentrated on primitive cultures) is that reli-
gion is made up of rites and observances designed to propitiate the gods and
thus gain their support, that specific rites and observances are delegated to
specific members of the community, that deities themselves have fixed,
explicit functions to perform, and that religion exists primarily for the benefit
of the social order and not for addressing the spiritual needs of the individual.
In this way, a society’s ‘‘spiritual beings’’ turn out to be an integral facet of
the overall system. ‘‘The religious,’’ maintains Durkheim, is identical with
‘‘the social.’’ For ‘‘in a general way . . . a society has all that is necessary to
arouse the sensation of the Divine in minds, merely by the power that it has
over them; to its members it is what a God is to its worshippers’’ (p. 206).
We immediately appreciate, of course, the accuracy of all this. Anyone who
has been raised in a religious home, a religious tradition, or who has simply
read and digested feelingly the work of Honoré de Balzac, or James Joyce,
or Bernard Malamud knows very well the extent to which religious beliefs
and customs can determine a person’s existence. The person of religion as a
directive, social force is undeniable. Yet surely the psychology of the individ-
ual plays a crucial, causal role in the total picture. To make God equal society
or society equal God finally raises more questions than it answers. Observes
Bronislaw Malinowski: ‘‘The social share in religious enactment is a condi-
tion necessary but not sufficient . . . Without the analysis of the individual
mind, we cannot take one step in the understanding of religion.’’50 Thus
the problem arises, how do we go about bringing the ‘‘individual mind’’ to
Durkheim’s social analysis? How are we to understand from an individual
perspective that society’s ‘‘power over its members’’ is ‘‘what a God is to its
worshippers?’’
The best way is to concentrate not upon society as we usually think of it
but upon the first society, the first social order the individual encounters,
the first social reality he is obliged to negotiate, the first ‘‘fixed relation’’
he confronts during the course of his days. To express it as unoriginally as
possible, we must begin at the beginning—and I don’t mean at the beginning
of the individual’s career as opposed to the individual’s societal enactments
precisely because the distinction is otiose: we are social to the root; our
individual and our social experiences are inextricably connected. The dyadic
circularity of the infant-mother bond is the individual-social matrix of our
bodily-emotional-psychological lives. Of overriding significance here is the
appreciation that we internalize our experience during the early period.

We take the parent into our primitive body-self, into our very tissues, our
very guts, as well as into our growing minds, our growing brains. We set up
the caregiver as the scaffolding of our developing selves, as the mind-body
presence on which we rely in utter life-or-death dependency and need. When
we begin to separate from the parents, from the life-supporting matrix of
our early experience, and move toward the wider social world, we bring our
internalizations with us; indeed, we use them to navigate (and to survive)
the passage. The internalizing monad becomes the gradually socialized
member of the community. Thus, the tie to societal institutions is grounded
in the tie to the parent. The power of societal directives derives from the
internalized bond to the caregiver. We are more or less hooked. There is a
vital, dynamic continuity here that, if we ignore it, obfuscates our grasp
of social forces and that, if we apprehend it, allows us to let in some light.
Let me render the whole basic business from another, related angle.
Because social institutions (religion, education, occupation, marriage, and
family) come to replace the ‘‘institution’’ of the early parent-child interaction,
because social institutions assume a parental role, we transfer to society the
feelings, the energies, the needs, the wishes, the loyalties, the loves (and fre-
quently the hatreds) that motivate us during the early period. The social
realm becomes an extension of the inner realm; it draws us, compels us, holds
us through the mind-body attachment that comprises the very core of the
first relationship. To a significant, even determining degree, then, our rela-
tionship with society is a transferential one. ‘‘Culture,’’ writes Géza Róheim
in a classic psychological statement of the issue, ‘‘leads instinct into acceptable
channels by the creation of substitute objects. The most important of these
substitutions is a human being, the wife who replaces the mother. The basis
of society is formed by these substitutions and therefore the psychology of
growing up falls, in many respects, in line with the psychology of culture.’’
And again, ‘‘civilization originates in delayed infancy and its function is
security. It is a huge network of more or less successful attempts to protect
mankind against the danger of object-loss, the colossal efforts made by a baby
who is afraid of being left alone in the dark.’’51
Accordingly, if our transferential relations with the social order turn out to
be hostile or in some manner unhealthy, the social order does to us (or threat-
ens to do to us) precisely what we dreaded early on as we interacted depen-
dently with the parent: it confronts us with ‘‘the dark,’’ with rejection,
separation, isolation, even death, the bogeys we discovered as newcomers
when parenting was either forestalled or malignant. To lose our place in
society can feel like losing our place in the arms of the caregiver, which is
why we tend generally to obey the rules, or to rebel in a fashion that will not
result in ostracism, in the temporary or permanent loss of everyone and
everything. Let’s recall now Professor Durkheim’s contention: ‘‘The power
of society over its members’’ is ‘‘what a God is to its worshippers.’’ The social
and the religious go together because religious society inherits the first society,
or function, as continuation of the initial social bond. The asking and the
receiving that we do in Christian prayer is but a small specific instance of
the way in which our early biosocial situation moves toward the wide social
world, its providential successor.
Winnicott’s famous discussion of ‘‘transitional objects’’ (the blankie, the
teddy, and the Raggedy Ann) illustrates very well the process of cultural
succession. Confronted with the closing stages of symbiosis, the newcomer
(20–36 months) gravitates creatively and trustingly toward the ‘‘potential
space’’ of the ‘‘intermediate area.’’ He lessens his emerging oneness by engag-
ing in illusory twoness. He mitigates the terror of separate, individual exis-
tence by constructing an intimate relationship with a symbolic companion,
or ally. He plays it both ways. He strikes out on his own, and he returns
imaginatively to the kind of psychic fusion to which he’s been accustomed.
‘‘With human beings,’’ states Winnicott, ‘‘there can be no separation, only a
threat of separation; and the threat is maximally or minimally traumatic
according to the experience of the first separatings.’’ However, ‘‘at the same
time,’’ Winnicott goes on, one can suggest that ‘‘separation is avoided
by the filling in of the potential space with creative playing, with the use of
symbols, and with all that eventually adds up to cultural life.’’52 The upshot
is clear.
Transitional objects are magical objects designed to control and to alter
reality in keeping with the wishes and needs of their youthful, omnipotent
creator. They have a practical magical purpose that is open, transparent. They
serve as symbolic substitutes for the relinquished parent, as transferential
entities that point motivationally toward the major symbolic, cultural substi-
tute for the receding parental figure, namely, the godhead. When Roheim
characterizes ‘‘the wife who replaces the mother’’ as civilizations’ chief substi-
tute object, he errs. Not only does he leave one-half of the human species out
of the equation, but he fails to appreciate the lengthy period that intervenes
between the relinquishment of the caregiver and the begetting of a spouse.
Not for everyone, of course, but for millions of Christians, it is the Deity
Who takes over the transitional realm; it is the Deity Who instrumentally
replaces the early, illusory, magical creations and Who provides the believer
with the inward security he craves as he assumes his separate existence in
the world. From exactly this angle we begin to appreciate in earnest the extent
to which religious conviction, or faith, is a species of the uncanny. God is real,

He feels real when we sense His presence, his ‘‘face,’’ in unexpected or ritually
induced moments of transformation, or grace, or gratitude, or mystical
merger, because our primal, loving internalizations are real, are there. To dis-
cover the Lord is to discover revelationally the self because the self and the
Lord are birthed in the same psychological soil: internalized attachment
to the loving biological provider. We create the Almighty projectively out
of our powerful transference love, our ever-active, lifelong wish for union,
protection, and care.
Concentration on the early period also helps us to focus and put to very
good use Malinowski’s seminal views on the nature of magical conduct.
Malinowski pointed out more than half a century ago that magical acts, one
and all, are ‘‘expressions of emotion’’ and, more particularly, emotion bound
up with the possession or the lack of power. Engaged in a series of practical
actions, an individual often comes to what Malinowski calls ‘‘a gap.’’ The hunter
loses his quarry, the sailor his breeze, the warrior his spear, or his strength.
What does an individual do in such a case, ‘‘setting aside all magic and
ritual?’’ Whether he is savage or civilized, in possession of magic or without
it, his ‘‘nervous system and his whole organism drive him to some substitute
activity.’’ He is possessed by the idea of the desired end; he sees it and
feels it. Hence, his ‘‘organism reproduces the acts suggested by the anticipa-
tion of hope.’’ The individual who is swayed by impotent fury clenched his
fists or imagines an attack upon his enemy. The lover who aches for the unat-
tainable object sees her in visions or mentally addresses her. The disappointed
hunter imagines the prey in his trap. Such behaviors are natural responses to
frustrating situations and are based upon ‘‘a universal psycho-physiological
mechanism.’’ They engender ‘‘extended expressions of emotion in act or
word’’ that allow the individual to ‘‘forecast the images of wished-for results’’
and by doing that, to regain equilibrium and ‘‘harmony with life.’’ Thus, a
‘‘strong emotional experience that spends itself in a . . . subjective flow
of images, words, or gestures’’ leaves a ‘‘very deep conviction of its reality.’’
To the ‘‘primitive man’’ or to the ‘‘credulous and untutored’’ of all ages, the
‘‘spontaneous spell or rite of belief, with its power, born of mental obsession,’’
must appear as a ‘‘direct revelation’’ from an external, impersonal force.53
Now, when one compares this ‘‘spontaneous ritual and verbiage of
overflowing passion or desire’’ with ‘‘traditionally fixed marginal ritual,’’ one
cannot but note a ‘‘striking resemblance.’’ The two products are ‘‘not
independent of each other.’’ Magical rituals ‘‘have been revealed to man’’ in
those ‘‘passionate experiences which assail him in the impasses of his instinc-
tive life and of his practical pursuits, in those gaps and breaches left in the
ever-imperfect wall of culture which he erects between himself and the . . .

temptations and dangers of his destiny.’’ We must recognize in this, writes
Malinowski, ‘‘the very fountainhead of magical belief.’’ Magic does not come
‘‘from the air’’ but from ‘‘experiences actually lived through.’’ As for magic’s
persistence, its ability to survive failure and disappointment, it comes from
the fact that positive cases always overshadow negative ones (‘‘one gain easily
outweighs several losses’’). Also, those who espouse and practice magic, at
least in ‘‘savage societies,’’ are individuals of ‘‘great energy’’ and ‘‘outstanding
personality,’’ that is to say, individuals who are capable of swaying others to
their view. In every ‘‘savage society’’ stories of a ‘‘big magician’s wonderful
cures or kills’’ form the ‘‘backbone of belief ’’ and contribute to the pool of
living myth that gives the authority of tradition to current formulas and
rites (pp. 80–81).
To these hugely helpful and insightful remarks I would immediately add
the following: the magical behaviors of the early period also derive from
‘‘experience actually lived through,’’ also address a ‘‘gap,’’ and ‘‘crisis,’’ or
‘‘impasse of instinctive life.’’ I am referring to the primal, traumatic experi-
ence of disruption that attends the passing of the symbiotic stage, that brings
with it feelings of separation and smallness, and that reverberates powerfully
and painfully in the psyche of many individuals for ever after, as Mahler sug-
gested. The first natural, instinctive response to this crisis is the creative,
imaginative turn to transitional objects, to magical, illusory creations that
wishfully restore the dyadic circularity of the infant-mother interaction.
To be more directly in line with Malinowski’s chosen terminology: having felt
the gradual diminishment of the life-sustaining symbiosis and the accompa-
nying anxiety of separation, the child’s nervous system, the child’s organism,
drives him to an ‘‘obsessive, substitute activity’’ that permits him to enjoy
the images of a ‘‘wished-for result’’ (reunion or remerger) and thereby to
regain his equilibrium and ‘‘harmony with life.’’ Thus does the child address
the initial gap in the ‘‘ever-imperfect wall of culture.’’ Subsequently, as a
developmental outgrowth of magical successes (or gains experienced early
on) we have the customary turn to the socially sanctioned Deity, including,
of course, the turn to individual, subjective prayer. Here, the basic biological
arrangement of empathetic, symbiotic dependency is imitatively restored as
the helpless one, the suppliant, asks the mighty one, the Lord, to be there
for him, to guide him morally, to forgive his transgressions, and to manifest
His loving, caring presence.
Róheim was among the first investigators to spy the connection between
magic and the traumas of the early period, and like Malinowski, he drew
upon this anthropological work in making his observations. ‘‘Magic must
be rooted in the child-mother situation,’’ he writes, ‘‘because in the beginning

the environment simply means the mother. Therefore, wishing or manifest-
ing the wish is the proper way to deal with the environment.’’54 Róheim
then goes on to say—and let’s keep our eyes open for the gap we found in
Malinowski—‘‘the mother is not only known by the fact that she gratifies
the wishes of the child. In truth, she would never be discovered were it not for
the fact that there is a gap between desire and fulfillment.’’ More specifically,
Magic originates from the child’s crying when he is abandoned and angry; it is
not merely the expression of what actually takes places in the dual-unity situa-
tion, but is also a withdrawal of attachment from the object to the means by
which the object is wooed, that is, from the mother of the word and back again
to the mother.
(p. 12)
Thus it is ‘‘obvious,’’ asserts Róheim, ‘‘that we grow up via magic.’’ We ‘‘pass

through the pregenital to the genital phases of organization, and concurrently
our mastery of our own body and of the environment increases. This is our
own ‘magic’ and it is analogous in some ways to the invocation of his own
‘luonto’ (or nature) by the Finnish wizard’’ (p. 44). In a series of key, summa-
rizing sentences, Róheim states that magic is our ‘‘great reservoir of strength
against frustration and defeat. Our first response to the frustrations of reality
is magic, and without this belief in our own specific ability or magic, we can-
not hold our own against the environment.’’ The baby ‘‘does not know the
limits of its power. It learns in time to recognize the parents as those who
determine its fate, but in magic it denies this dependency. The ultimate
denial of dependency comes from the all-powerful sorcerer who acts out the
role which he once attributed to the projected images.’’ While the ‘‘magical
omnipotence fantasy of the child is a part of growing up, magic in the hands
of an adult means a regression to an infantile fantasy’’ (pp. 45–46). Magic
says, in the end, I refuse to give up my desires.
Let’s turn now to a detailed examination of Christian rite and doctrine.
Let’s see the extent, if any, to which Christianity bears out the theoretical
picture we’ve just developed.
Notes
1. As I have already stated, I will be using the King James Version of the Bible
throughout this book.
2. Silvan S. Tomkins, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, vol. I (New York: Springer,
1962), p. 6.
3. The term ‘‘object’’ is used customarily in psychology because the infant has yet
to perceive the caregiver, usually the mother, as a separate, full-fledged person in the
way we normally intend the term. Object is an attempt to render the phenomenology
of the infant’s perception.
4. David L. Schacter, Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, the Past
(New York: Basic Books, 1996), p. 5.
5. Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal
Experience (New York: Guilford Press, 1999), p. 1.
6. Schacter. Searching for Memory, p. 174.
7. Siegel. The Developing Mind, pp. 24, 29, 30.
8. Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Ethical Brain (New York: Dana Press, 2005),
p. 134.
9. Erik H. Erickson, Insight and Responsibility (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964),
p. 153.
10. ———. Young Man Luther (New York: W. W. Norton, 1958), p. 264.
11. See Joan W. Anderson, Where Angels Walk (New York: Ballantine Books,
2003).
12. Gary Whitmer, ‘‘On the Nature of Dissociation,’’ Psychoanalytic Quarterly 70
(2001): 807.
13. As noted in Chapter 1, ‘‘good enough mothering’’ is D. W. Winnicott’s termi-
nology. See D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Penguin, 1971), p. 12.
14. Gerald M. Edelman, The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Conscious-
ness (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
15. See Otto Rank, Psychology and the Soul, trans. W. Turner (New York:
A. S. Barnes, 1950).
16. Ethel S. Person, Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: The Power of Romantic
Passion (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 132.
17. Margaret S. Mahler, Fred Pine, and Anni Bergman, The Psychological Birth of
the Human Infant (New York: Basic Books, 1975).
18. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 13.
19. Ana-Maria Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1979), p. 49.
20. René Spitz, The First Relationship (New York: International Universities Press,
1965), p. 81.
21. H. M. Southwood, ‘‘The Origin of Self-Awareness,’’ International Journal of
Psychoanalysis 66 (1973): 235–39.
22. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 22.
23. Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant (New York: Basic Books,
1985), pp. 74–75, 90–93.
24. Robert Rogers, Self and Other (New York: New York University Press, 1991),
p. 41.
25. Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language, 1934, trans. E. Hanfman and G. Vakar
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979).
26. See Michael Basch, ‘‘Psychoanalytical Interpretation and Cognitive Transfor-

mation,’’ International Journal of Psychoanalysis 62 (1981): 151–74.
27. I am indebted in this paragraph to David Bleich’s paper, ‘‘New Considerations
on the Infantile Acquisition of Language.’’ Presented to the Psychological Center for
the Study of the Arts, SUNY Buffalo, March 16, 1990, pp. 1–28.
28. Henry Plotkin, Evolution in Mind: An Introduction to Evolutional Psychology
(London: Penguin, 1997), p. 249.
29. Siegel, The Developing Mind, pp. 2–5.
30. Ibid., p. 13.
31. Ibid., p. 26.
32. Ibid., pp. 218–19.
33. Winifred Gallagher, ‘‘Motherless Child,’’ Sciences 32 (July 1992): 12.
34. Richard M. Restak, The Infant Mind (New York: Doubleday, 1986), p. 149.
35. Elizabeth Johnston, Investigating Minds (Bronxville, NY: Sarah Lawrence
College, 2007), p. 1.
36. For an outstanding discussion of the unconscious mind and its implicit inten-
tional nature, see John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1992).
37. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and
Taboo (New York: Arks Paperbacks, 1984), p. 18.
38. ———. Natural Symbols: Explorations of Cosmology (London: Routledge,
1996), p. 7.
39. Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 28.
40. J. Smith, ed., The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (New York,
HarperCollins, 1995), p. 673; J. Hinnels, ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Religions
(London: Penguin, 1995), p. 282; J. Bowker, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of World
Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 598; W. Doniger, ed.,
Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions (Springfield, MA: Merriam-
Webster, 1999), p. 678.
41. David S. Noss and John Boyer Noss, A History of the World’s Religions
(New York: Macmillan, 1990), p. 14. Emphasis added.
42. Douglas, Purity and Danger, pp. 58, 62, 72.
43. Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, trans. R. Brian (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, [1902] 1972), p. 116.
44. Suzanne K. Langer, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 307.
45. James Frazer, The Golden Bough (New York: Mentor Books, [1900] 1959),
p. 35.
46. See Smith, HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion, p. 287.
47. Edward Tylor, The Origins of Culture, vol. 2 (New York: Harper and Brothers,
[1871] 1958), p. 8.
48. Weston La Barre, The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion (New York: Doubleday,
1970), p. 15.
49. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. J. Swain
(Boston: Allen and Unwin, [1912] 1976).
50. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion (New York: Anchor Books,
1954), p. 69.
51. Géza Róheim, The Origin and Function of Culture (New York: Doubleday,
1971), pp. 122, 131.
52. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, pp. 108–109.
53. Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion, p. 79.
54. Géza Róheim, Magic and Schizophrenia (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1955), p. 11.
CHAPTER
PART ONE
3
The Infantilizing Process
Baptism
Baptism is ‘‘the basis of the whole Christian life’’1 because baptism restores
the worshiper to a version of the early period wherein he or she is once again
a ‘‘little child’’ in the care of a loving, omnipotent protector and provider.
Within this basic ritualistic framework the whole of Christian doctrine and
practice will transpire because Christian doctrine and practice attain their
full, magical potential only upon the mnemonic background or ‘‘screen’’ of
life’s initial stages. For the promise of salvation to ring true and thus arouse
the Holy Spirit, the bond with Christ must implicitly recall at the level of
state-dependent memory the bond with the biological caregiver, the ultimate,
tangible source of the Christian’s ‘‘spiritual’’ convictions. ‘‘You can be born
again,’’ cries the Reverend Robert H. Schuller; you can become ‘‘a child of
God. . . . Heaven is for real.’’2 And then, in another place, mixing the biologi-
cal with the ‘‘spiritual’’ in an attempt to explain this, Schuller writes, ‘‘The old
negative blood is drawn out’’ and ‘‘the new spirit of Jesus Christ [the Holy
Spirit], like new blood, flows through your entire nervous and emotional
system’’ (p. 156). This is ‘‘what God can do inside your mind,’’ asserts Schuller
(p. 156), which is to say, this is what worshipers can do inside their own minds
when they unite implicit memory with magical belief and practice.
As one receives the Holy Spirit through baptismal rite, declares Neil T.
Anderson, ‘‘he puts on a whole new nature and gets to go to heaven.’’3
He becomes ‘‘a child born of God’’ (p. 9) and also ‘‘a saint’’ (p. 12). His ‘‘identity’’
is no longer determined by his ‘‘physical heritage.’’ How he ‘‘formerly identi-
fied himself no longer applies.’’ For now, ‘‘Christ is all’’ (p. 9). One ‘‘learns to
walk again not by sight this time but by faith’’ (p. 145). We ‘‘fix our eyes on
Jesus’’ as we ‘‘learn to walk,’’ states Anderson, calling vividly to mind the man-
ner in which one learns to walk in the initial biological instance. Before one is
baptized, writes Anderson, he is ‘‘separate from God’’ and ‘‘spiritually dead.’’

Jesus ‘‘came to remove that separation.’’ The ‘‘converted’’ are ‘‘in’’ Him,
and He is ‘‘in the converted. . . . He is in you’’ (p. 145). Here is the primal sym-
biotic union toward which the whole of Christianity directs the believer.
Baptism, declares Tim Stafford, ‘‘opens the door for a lifelong love affair
with Jesus.’’4 One is afforded the ‘‘glorious privilege’’ of becoming ‘‘a child
of God,’’ but not a child who must eventually confront separation, or loss
of the parent’s ‘‘familiar face’’ (p. 234). The Holy Spirit, writes Stafford,
‘‘would come as something better than Jesus-on-earth; He would be Jesus
within’’ (p. 235), which means, of course, Jesus is always there, is always
present, and is always available when the devotee, Christ’s ‘‘little child,’’ feels
the need to cleave unto his loving provider, the Big One upon whom he
depends, as in the basic biological arrangement, for everything including life
itself. In a word, ‘‘Jesus within’’ magically recreates the organ relationship of
the mother-infant dyad. The ‘‘little child’’ becomes a ‘‘member’’ of Christ’s
body (I Cor. 6:15).5 Christian unity within God is ultimately morphological.
What matters in all this, obviously, is not the baptismal ceremony in and
of itself but the state of mind one achieves through one’s participation in the
ceremony’s goal as announced and underscored in the New Testament
by Jesus:
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children,
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.6
(Matt. 18:3)
As I noted toward this book’s beginning, Jesus is not playing symbolical

games; he means business: His followers must love Him more than their
actual parents, and if they are parents, they must love Him more than their
own offspring.
I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against
her mother. . . . He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy
of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
(Matt. 10:35, 37)
Clearly, Jesus intends to take the parent’s place in the worshiper’s life, and He
intends to transform the worshiper into His own little child and a member of
His extended family of followers. For this and only this will trigger the psy-
chology essential to the successful working of the salvational scheme that is
Christianity itself. Just as the potential Christian merged with the biological
caregivers early on, so will Christ’s ‘‘convert’’ merge with the almighty
The Infantilizing Process 75
Parent-God whose loving, salvational presence will reverberate all the way
down to the level of implicit, state-dependent memory where the biological
caregiver mnemonically resides. The magical ‘‘mystery,’’ or ‘‘trick,’’ of the reli-
gious substitution is facilitated by the convert’s infantile amnesia: he can’t
recall the early period explicitly and thus can’t see what is actually occurring
as he undergoes his ‘‘conversion’’ and apprehends the appearance of the
putative Holy Spirit, the enigmatic Spirit-Person whose entrance into the
magical procedure ostensibly confirms its veracity. Accordingly, baptism is
not a single, solitary ceremony one undergoes along the way, often toward
the beginning of his earthly existence. It is an inward, psychological process
one is undergoing all the time as one becomes and continues to be the ‘‘little
child’’ of the Redeemer. ‘‘We are baptized but once,’’ writes G. P. Fisher in his
A History of Christian Doctrine,
yet the act is in the fullest sense eschatological: it sets its seal on our whole life,
which is ‘‘nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and constantly lived
in,’’ nor do we ‘‘perfectly fulfill the sign of baptism until the last day.’’ Baptism
is indeed for Luther the ‘‘outward and visible sign’’ of his whole doctrine of
justification.7
Infantile baptism, holds the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ‘‘is certainly
valid and efficacious,’’ but ‘‘Christian initiation remains incomplete.’’ It is
‘‘confirmation’’ at ‘‘maturity’’ that leads the Christian ‘‘to a more intimate
union with Christ,’’ that ‘‘imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark,
the ‘character’ which is the sign that Jesus Christ has marked a Christian with
the seal of His Spirit [the Holy Spirit] by clothing him with power from on
high.’’ 8 Thus, confirmation ‘‘unites us more firmly with Christ’’ as our
‘‘maturity’’ goes forward; ‘‘increases the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us[;] . . .
roots us more deeply in the divine filiation which makes us cry, Abba,
Father!’’ (p. 330). Surely the upshot is perfectly apparent: baptism’s aim is
to position the Christian in filial union with his Parent-God, his ‘‘Abba,’’
his ‘‘Father,’’ to make sure this inward conception, this inward apprehension,
this ‘‘seal,’’ is present to the worshiper on a daily basis, all the time, so that the
worshiper might feel all the time the working of the ‘‘Spirit’’ within him,
which means from the psychological/neurological angle the persistent
implicit recollection of the biological person (the Holy Spirit is doctrinally
a person) who ensured his security as a vulnerable, helpless, biological organism
during the course of his early days. Baptism is ‘‘the basis of the whole Christian
life’’ because the basic biological situation (which baptism recreates) is the
foundation of our natural life from which and only from which the power of
Christianity as a religion derives.
Prayer and Faith

With baptism, then, the homeopathic magical system of Christianity is
under way. The worshiper is developing an alternate identity that he will acti-
vate alongside his worrisome ‘‘physical heritage,’’ as Anderson put it at the
beginning of this chapter.9 No longer separated from his parental provider,
his ‘‘Abba,’’ no longer on his own, no longer small and insignificant (through
baptism he becomes a ‘‘chosen’’ one [John 15:16]), and above all, no longer
ultimately mortal, no longer bound ultimately for extinction, the ‘‘convert,’’
the newly emergent ‘‘little child,’’ is able to stand his biological life upon its
proverbial head and to replace it transformationally with the perfections of
his newfound ‘‘spiritual’’ existence. To go around this way, to consider him-
self inwardly to be this way, in other words, to imitate in mind and emotion
the identity suggested in baptismal doctrine comprises, of course, the home-
opathic or imitative aspect of his magical conduct. However, it is hardly
sufficient in fashioning a magical identity simply to think about or to believe
in the ‘‘new man’’ (Col. 3:10). One must also behave accordingly, manifest
one’s new identity through one’s words and deeds, in short act it out—which
is precisely what Christians do through the chief expression of their belief,
their faith, namely, prayer.
There is no tighter connection in the realm of Christianity, indeed in the
religious realm generally, than the connection between prayer and faith. They
are spiritual symbionts, inextricably intertwined, breathing the same supersen-
sible air, and destined to flourish, or to perish, together. Granting them each a
single clause by way of compact definition, I would suggest the following: faith
is the willful assertion that God not only exists but is there for one, available to
one, involved caringly in one’s life and affairs; prayer is faith in action, faith
manifested, expressed, the actual calling upon God in the supernatural world.
The mutuality, or perhaps the ‘‘system,’’ is ironclad: if one has faith, one prays;
if one prays, one demonstrates faith; if one fails to pray, faith slumbers; if one
ceases to pray permanently, faith dies. And it goes without saying, of course,
that faith’s demise is Christianity’s demise. Note this passage from Friedrich
Heiler’s classic study, Prayer,10 to which I introduced the reader early on, and
which presents the orthodox position on the matter: ‘‘Faith is, in Luther’s
judgment, ‘prayer and nothing but prayer. He who does not pray or call upon
God in his hour of need, assuredly does not think of Him as God, nor does he
give Him the honor that is his due.’ ’’ Heiler continues,
The great evangelistical mystic, Johann Arndt, constantly emphasized the truth
that: ‘‘without prayer we cannot find God; prayer is the means by which we seek
and find Him.’’ Schleiermacher, the restorer of evangelical theology in the
nineteenth century, observes in one of his sermons: ‘‘to be religious and to

pray—that is really the same thing.’’ . . . The same thought is expressed by
the gifted evangelical divine, Richard Rothe, when he says, ‘‘the religious
impulse is essentially the impulse to pray. It is by prayer, in fact, that the process
of individual religious life is governed, the process of the gradual fulfillment
of God’s indwelling in the individual and his religious life. Therefore, the
non-praying man is rightly considered to be religiously dead.’’
(p. xiii)
The upshot is clear: to get at the essence of Christian prayer is to get at the
essence of Christian faith; to get at the essence of Christian faith is to get at
the essence of the Christian religion.
Personal, individual, informal prayer, as opposed to codified, congrega-
tional prayer, is my main interest. This opposition, as it turns out, has a com-
plex, disputatious history that is not our business here. It is enough to say that
the individualism of prayer is usually traced back to Jeremiah and the Psalms
of the Old Testament, that Jesus’s prayer on the mount is widely regarded as
the model prayer for individual Christians (‘‘Not my will but Thine be
done’’);11 that Paul views personal, intercessory prayer as a cornerstone of
spiritual practice; and that by Luther’s day subjective, solitary prayer in which
the worshiper gives himself over to a fervent, one-to-one relationship with his
God is moving steadily toward the heart of Christianity, first for the Protes-
tant, and then, with rather less momentum perhaps, for the Catholic as well.
Accordingly, what follows will find us exploring from our particular theoreti-
cal angle the motivational dynamics of personal prayer in the Judeo-Christian
tradition.
I rely upon a wide variety of sources, but for much of the discussion
I utilize three pivotal, relatively recent treatments of the subject, namely,
Heiler’s Prayer, regarded by Hans Küng as the classical work on the topic
and perhaps the most scholarly and comprehensive book on prayer ever
to appear in the West; Ole Hallesby’s Prayer, another classic, translated into
several languages, reprinted 15 times in English alone, and probably the most
widely read and influential Protestant discussion composed during the twen-
tieth century; and Romano Guardini’s Prayer in Practice, a treasured work
among Roman Catholics and penned by one of the Church’s most astute
and respected thinkers—undoubtedly another classic treatment. Needless to
say, for all three of these authors, prayer and faith are integrally connected:
faith depends upon prayer for its existence, and prayer is nothing other than
faith’s signal manifestation. ‘‘We must bear in mind,’’ declares Guardini, ‘‘that
faith itself depends on prayer. . . . Prayer is the basic act of faith as breathing is
the basic act of life.’’12 Until we pray, maintains Hallesby, we have no access
to God, and God has no access to us: ‘‘He cannot gain admittance. To pray is
to believe.’’13 Faith is ‘‘prayer and nothing but prayer,’’ writes Heiler, echoing
Martin Luther, as we’ve just seen; without prayer, ‘‘we cannot find God’’
(p. xiii). The issue could hardly be plainer.
As we demonstrated at length in Chapter 2, the basic biological situation
of parent-child interaction is centrally concerned with asking and receiving.
Over and over again, thousands upon thousands of times, for years, the little
one calls upon the big one for sustenance and support, and the big
one responds. As I’ve stated, one would be hard-pressed to discover within
the realm of nature another example of physiological and emotional con-
ditioning to compare with this one in both depth and duration. As the
parent-child relationship deepens and develops, it is steadily, unremittingly
internalized by the growing youngster, not in some vague, metaphorical
way, mind you, but emotively, affectively, organically, even neurally until it
becomes the foundation of his budding perceptual existence. The caregiver
is taken psychically inside and set up as an internal presence that is integrally
connected to, indeed that is inseparable from, the emerging self. The early
interaction is imprinted on the brain.
That the Judeo-Christian tradition of individual subjective prayer is
ultimately petitionary in nature, in other words, that asking the Parent-God
for help and loving support resides at its theological core, is indisputable.
‘‘The heart of all prayer is petition,’’ states Heiler in one place (p. 17); and in
another, ‘‘The free spontaneous petitionary prayer of the natural man exhibits
the prototype of all prayer’’ (p. 1). ‘‘Whether we like it or not,’’ declares
C. H. Spurgeon, ‘‘asking is the rule of the Kingdom.’’14 ‘‘Petition is the heart
of prayer,’’ writes Patrick Cotter.15 Prayer is a ‘‘reverent petition to God,’’
asserts James Pruitt.16 The Judeo-Christian tradition of prayer, derived from
both the Old and New Testaments, has always been ‘‘essentially petitionary,’’
observes Walter A. Elwell in the Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology.17
Prayer is a ‘‘palpable thirst to ask,’’ maintains Timothy Jones in The Art of
Prayer.18 ‘‘Prayer’’ is a ‘‘trustful appeal for aid in our necessity,’’ holds the great
sixteenth-century theologian Huldrych Zwingli.19 ‘‘Give us this day our daily
bread,’’ requests the Lord’s Prayer. One could cite a thousand similar passages.
As for asking and receiving, we have the following: ‘‘One has only to ask the
Father in order to receive what is needed,’’ states Elwell, echoing Scripture.20
‘‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive,’’ writes
Hallesby, quoting Matthew 21:22.21 ‘‘Petition’’ for ‘‘divine grace’’ is ‘‘freely
bestowed,’’ observes Heiler (p. 243). ‘‘God’s power’’ is ‘‘capable of giving
everything,’’ maintains Guardini.22 ‘‘Asking is our staple diet,’’ asserts Gordon
Lindsay; ‘‘the spirit suffers when it is not fed the Bread of Life.’’23 ‘‘Prayer is
the spiritual practice of asking God for what you want and accepting that it
has been done once you have made the request,’’ suggests Joshua David Stone
in Soul Psychology; ‘‘God hears and answers all prayers.’’24 ‘‘Do you know why
the mighty God of the universe chooses to answer prayers?’’ inquires Richard
S. Foster. ‘‘It is because His children ask.’’25 ‘‘Everything will be given to
you,’’ declares Cotter in How to Pray; you are merely claiming ‘‘what is already
yours.’’26 Our asking is itself ‘‘God’s answering,’’ holds Jones.27 The classical
expression on the asking side has already been given, of course: ‘‘Give us this
day our daily bread.’’ On the receiving side we have, from Psalm 23, ‘‘The Lord
is my shepherd; I shall not want’’ (vv. 1–2). Taken together, these two lines
contain the pith of the petitionary mind-set.
My aim here, needless to say, is to establish a clear motivational link
between the immediate context of supplicatory ritual and the basic biological
situation of asking and receiving as earlier described. With such an aim in
view, we must inquire, first, how does one go about this individual subjective
praying, this asking the Parent-God for succor and support? Second, do the
instructions for prayer proffered by the authoritative theologians call to
mind explicitly the early parent-child interaction, the interaction in which
the helpless, dependent little one calls upon the all-powerful provider for
nourishment, attention, love, and care?
To pray successfully, one must adopt a certain attitude, a certain psycho-
logical posture, or stance. One does not come to God in just any way but
in a very specific way indeed. I’m referring to an attitude of utter dependency,
utter helplessness, utter submission, a willful attempt to get rid of one’s will
entirely. ‘‘Helplessness,’’ writes Hallesby, ‘‘is unquestionably the first and surest
indication of a praying heart. As far as I can see, prayer has been ordained only
for the helpless’’ (p. 13). Hallesby goes on in the personal style that has made
his book so influential:
Listen, my friend! Your helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to
the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas. He hears it from
the very moment that you are seized with helplessness, and He becomes actively
engaged at once in hearing and answering the prayer of your helplessness.
Thus ‘‘helplessness is the real secret and impelling power of prayer,’’ the ‘‘very
essence of prayer,’’ the ‘‘decisive factor’’ that makes us ‘‘attached to God’’ and
‘‘more strongly dependent on Him’’ (pp. 14, 17, 16, 21). At the heart of
successful prayer, states Heiler, dwells the ‘‘expression’’ of one’s ‘‘weakness
and dependency.’’ One ‘‘submits’’ entirely to ‘‘God’s will’’ and strives to make
such ‘‘submission’’ a ‘‘permanent attitude’’ (p. 268). In fact, the ‘‘feeling of
dependence’’ is the ‘‘universal feeling’’ that ‘‘animates’’ the whole of human-

ity’s relation with the Deity; ‘‘no where . . . is it revealed so clearly as in
prayer’’ (p. 77). ‘‘Man is ever conscious of his want and helplessness,’’ main-
tains Guardini; ‘‘it is only right, therefore, that he should turn to the bounti-
ful and almighty God, who is not only ready to give and to help, but greatly
rejoices in it.’’ Unless we ‘‘surrender without reservation’’ to the Creator,
Guardini continues, unless we realize that ‘‘our very existence depends on
God and His grace, our praying will be futile’’ (pp. 78, 64). Whereas our
powers are limited, even puny, God’s are infinite. He allows us ‘‘to breathe,
to be, and above all, to approach him with our needs’’ (p. 134). Identical
views may be instantly discovered in a thousand places. ‘‘Thy will be done,’’
writes Cotter in How to Pray (p. 28). The ‘‘value of surrender’’ in prayer is
‘‘extraordinary,’’ declares Larry Dossey in Healing Words.28 ‘‘God’s plan
involves daily dependence on Him,’’ asserts Lindsay in Prayer That Moves
Mountains; ‘‘without Him we can do nothing’’ (p. 37). Nor is it only one’s
inward attitude, or stance, that determines the emotional, psychological
quality of one’s praying. One’s bodily conduct may also enter integrally into
the homeopathic picture. One can, of course, worship in any manner one
chooses, at any time, in any place, in any posture. Yet for millions of
Christians everywhere, inward dependency, helplessness, and submission are
outwardly expressed, or mirrored, by prayer’s traditional, ritualistic behaviors:
suppliants kneel, bow down, close their eyes, fold their hands, even prostrate
themselves entirely. Stephen F. Winward, in Teach Yourself to Pray, cites
Psalm 95 as follows: ‘‘O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel
before the Lord.’’ In these ‘‘familiar words of the Venite,’’ he observes, ‘‘the
Psalmist invites us to let our bodies also participate in the worship of
God.’’29 Let’s take a moment now to see how this theme of dependency, of
helplessness, of submission is developed in the literature we are employing.
Remember, we are looking for open, explicit, indubitable references to the
basic biological situation of asking and receiving, in which the helpless little
one petitions the caregiver for loving ministration and support.
‘‘If you are a mother,’’ asserts Hallesby,
you will understand very readily this aspect of prayer. Your infant child cannot
formulate in words a single petition to you. Yet the little one prays the best way
he knows how. All he can do is cry, but you understand very well his pleading
cry. All you need to do is see him in all his helpless dependence upon you,
and a prayer touches your mother-heart, a prayer which is stronger than the
loudest cry. He who is Father of all that is called mother and all that is called
child in heaven and on earth deals with us in the same way.
(p. 14)
Thus, we leave everything ‘‘in His hands.’’ We cling in our helplessness to the
‘‘spirit of prayer’’ whenever we pray. We know ‘‘the Lord is at our side,’’ and
therefore we no longer feel frightened (pp. 105, 102, 119). Indeed, we know
He is there constantly, and so we may tell Him ‘‘throughout the day,’’ and
during the nighttime, too, ‘‘how dependent we are upon Him.’’ When his
own ‘‘little boy’’ comes to him with ‘‘round baby eyes’’ and asks for his assis-
tance, Hallesby writes, he sees at once the manner in which everyone should
approach the ‘‘heavenly Father’’ (p. 121). We must ‘‘let our holy and almighty
God care for us just as an infant surrenders himself to his mother’s care’’ (p. 20).
And by the way, Hallesby is perfectly aware of the psychological dimension
of the discussion; he is not using the theme of dependency in some meta-
phorical fashion: ‘‘Psychologically,’’ he states, ‘‘helplessness is the sustaining
and impelling power of prayer’’ (p. 25). Heiler agrees (p. 32) and also turns
to childhood in illustration. The feeling of ‘‘dependence and impotence’’
is the key to successful praying, for we have no genuine power of our own;
we are like ‘‘children who can do nothing’’ (p. 36). It is precisely this child-
like mind-set, this child-like ‘‘trust and surrender,’’ holds Heiler (pp. 130–31),
that marks all the ‘‘eminent men’’ with a ‘‘genius for prayer,’’ all the ‘‘great
men of religion’’ (p. 253). We turn to God ‘‘in prayer,’’ writes Guardini, ‘‘as
the child in distress turns to his mother.’’ Jesus taught us, Guardini goes on,
‘‘that we should turn to the Father and ask Him for our daily bread,’’ for
the ‘‘necessities’’ of our ‘‘daily life’’ (p. 77). This is because the Almighty
knows best what is ‘‘needful’’ for us. He knows how to love us truly, how to
look after us in our ‘‘helplessness’’ and ‘‘want’’ (p. 78). ‘‘God will be found
in supplication,’’ claims George Arthur Buttrick, ‘‘not by our seeking’’ but
‘‘by a response . . . to One of whom we are dimly aware—as a child, half wak-
ing, responds to the mother who bends over him.’’30 When we pray, main-
tains Jones, ‘‘we take hold of His willingness to listen and move; we exercise
our right as children to influence a loving parent’’ (p. 107). Cries Horatius
Bonar in The New Book of Christian Prayers: ‘‘Lead me by Thine own hand,
choose out the path for me.’’31 Once again, a thousand similar quotations
may be instantly found in the literature. The dependent child relying on
the loving Parent-God is probably Christianity’s most common depiction of
the supplicatory relationship. Thus a culminating question arises: why does
successful prayer hinge so decisively upon the assumption of an infantile,
child-like state, a state of helplessness, dependence, and submission that is
persistently rendered in terms that recall the early parent-child interaction?
The ritual is designed to trigger the attractor state, to ‘‘prime’’ the worshiper
for the reawakening of the core relationship with the biological caregiver. One’s
praying becomes the ‘‘cue’’ for the emergence of implicit, state-dependent
memory, for the inward perception and feeling that one is still united with
the parental object, now transmuted through religious narrative into the invis-
ible, compassionate Deity of the putative supernatural realm. This is why the
worshiper ‘‘turns to God as the child in distress turns to his mother’’; why
he ‘‘lets God care for him as an infant surrenders himself to his mother’s care’’;
why he adopts an attitude of ‘‘child-like trust,’’ of utter ‘‘dependency’’ and
‘‘helplessness,’’ frequently upon his knees (preambulation). In the performance
of this infantilizing enactment or ‘‘play,’’ the very heart of Christian faith,
the worshiper seeks unconsciously to undo the past, to reverse the flow of time,
to restore the enormous adaptational advantages he possessed as a symbiotic
partner or ‘‘organ’’ of an omnipotent, loving protector and provider. The rite
of prayer attests, on the one hand, to the preciousness and power of the first
relationship, to the severity of our early needs, to the depth of our conditioning
as little ones when asking and receiving were the order of the day, to the persis-
tence of our longing for unconditional love and care—in a word, to the urgency
of our unconscious requirements as they arise from the foundational years.
On the other hand, and just as significantly, the rite of supplication reflects
the anxieties and the exigencies of the moment, the problematical now of the
prayer’s existence, his present concerns, his present wishes (including those for
the future), his present need for reassurance and support. Writes Walter Burkert,
‘‘Rituals are complicated, ambivalent, and not seldom opaque even to those
who practice them. . . . It makes more sense to see them as cultural attempts
to make the ‘facts of life’ manageable and predictable; to perform an act of
artificial social creation, as if to veil biology.’’32 We don’t have to puzzle very
long to espy the biology that is veiled by supplication: separation from
the matrix; the loss of infantile omnipotence; dealing with a dangerous,
unpredictable world; the inescapable facts of accident, illness, aging, and
death. The point is, Christianity is not merely based imagistically on an
infantile model through baptismal doctrine; it actually recreates one
in prayer. Suppliants, spurred on by their synaptic structure, by the very
neurological makeup of their mind-brains, act out their infantile wishes.
The biological foundation of infantile life is ritualistically transformed
through homeopathic magic into the cornerstone of Christian practice.
Toward the Nature of the Holy Spirit

(Prayer and Faith Continued)
The appetite for symbiotic merger, the longing to undo the past, to dis-
solve ego boundaries and reunite with a succoring, all-powerful provider
appears with striking, unmistakable clarity everywhere in the Christian
literature of supplication. How could it not? The passion for symbiotic union
is but a variation on prayer’s central figure, namely, that of the helpless child
crying out to the mighty Parent-God. In this way, the most primitive,
elemental asking and receiving that one enacts in prayer stems from the most
primitive, elemental experience one undergoes early on, namely, that of
existing as an ‘‘organ’’ of the parent, that of being oneself and the caregiver,
too. The ‘‘yearning for union,’’ maintains Guardini, is the ‘‘first motive of
prayer.’’ Our ‘‘soul longs for union with God.’’ We ‘‘cannot be without
Him.’’ When we pray, ‘‘our prayer becomes love, for love means seeking
to be completely at one with another autonomous being’’ (pp. 55–58).
Yet, Guardini goes on, ‘‘only God can create that nearness that fulfills our
yearning.’’ Because desire for the Almighty is ‘‘inborn in human nature,’’
we ‘‘cry’’ for Him ‘‘again and again.’’ Guardini sums everything up with the
assertion that ‘‘the yearning for God, for union, is also prayer’’ (pp. 56–58,
my emphasis). Let’s look further.
Prayer’s ‘‘deepest motive,’’ observes Heiler, ‘‘is the burning desire of the heart
which finds rest in blissful union with God’’ (p. 104). The ‘‘yearning for blessed
union,’’ Heiler continues, is capable of ‘‘overbearing’’ all the other ‘‘themes’’ that
often find their way into supplication, namely, ‘‘guilt, grace, and sin’’ (p. 127).
In fully successful prayer, states Heiler, ‘‘God and soul are bound together in
indissoluble unity.’’ The ‘‘contrast of subject and object which rules the soul’s
normal life is dissolved.’’ One ‘‘fuses with Him in deepest unity.’’ One encoun-
ters Him ‘‘face to face’’ (pp. 141–42, 160). ‘‘God is in me and I am in Him,’’
cries Elsa of Neustadt (cited in Heiler, p. 142). ‘‘I sink myself in Thee; I in
Thee, Thou in me,’’ exclaims Gerhard Tersteegen (cited in Heiler, p. 190).
‘‘Thou alone art my food and drink,’’ pronounces Thomas à Kempis (cited in
Heiler, p. 209). ‘‘If I am not united with Thee I shall be forever unhappy,’’
insists Gertrude of Hefta (cited in Heiler, p. 209). ‘‘I am Thou and Thou art I,’’
declare ecstatic, mystical prayers worldwide (see Heiler, p. 190). The famous
historian Arnold Toynbee expresses it this way:
When prayer—the communion between human person and divine person—

has been raised to its highest degree of spiritual intensity, it is transmuted into
another kind of experience. At this higher spiritual level, personality is tran-
scended, and, with it, the separateness that is personality’s limitation. At this
supra-personal spiritual height, the experience is unitive. At this height, God
and man do not communicate with each other because, at this height, they
are identical.33
Of special fascination is the extent to which the urge for prayerful union with
God reflects, or better, picks up, the phenomenology of the early parent-child
interaction. To adopt the infantile model is to reexperience psychologically

key relational features of the intimate primal bond. ‘‘As a true mother dedicates
her life to the care of her children,’’ writes Hallesby, ‘‘so the eternal God in
His infinite mercy has dedicated Himself externally to the care of his frail
and erring children’’ (p. 15). Specific, clinical details on the biological side of
this simile actually present themselves as wondrous, ‘‘spiritual’’ attributes on
the religious, supplicatory side. Needless to say, if prayer recreates through
imitative magic the asking and receiving of life’s initial stages, as it surely does,
then the appearance of those clinical traces in supplication is exactly what we
should expect. We note in Christopher Bollas’s study, The Shadow of the Object,
for example, the manner in which the caregiver transforms the infant’s world.
‘‘It is undeniable,’’ Bollas declares, ‘‘that as the infant’s other self, the mother
transforms the baby’s internal and external environment.’’ If the infant is
distressed, Bollas continues, the ‘‘resolution of discomfort is achieved by the
apparition-like presence of the mother’’ who arrives in a timely manner to
remove the distress. Bollas calls this a ‘‘primary transformation’’: emptiness,
agony, and anger become fullness and contentment.34
Over and over again during life’s opening stages—thousands upon thou-
sands of times—the parent and the child are joined in such ministering,
transformational encounters. When we discover the Lord through our
supplication, Heiler informs us, ‘‘a wonderful metamorphosis takes place.’’
No longer do we feel uncertain about things; no longer do we have sensations
of doubt and dread. Rather, we undergo ‘‘the blissful consciousness of
being cared for’’ by a ‘‘protecting higher Power’’ (pp. 259–60, my emphasis).
‘‘Confidence, peace, hope, and trust’’ suffuse us, ‘‘often quite suddenly,’’ and
always, Heiler notes, involuntarily and unconsciously (p. 259). Surely the
reader will recognize at once what is going on here. The adoption of the
supplicatory, infantile model (as a response to some sort of crisis or stress)
triggers the old transformational feelings that reside at the core of maternal
ministration, maternal care. We undergo again the elemental transforma-
tional experience that we underwent thousands of times during the early
period when our call to the succoring figure brought about a change in our
internal and external environment. To pray is to reactivate both wishfully
and adaptively a basic, primitive, biological conditioning that simply went
too deep into our neural structure ever to be forgotten or relinquished. What
served us well at the start will, through imitative or homeopathic magic, con-
tinue to serve us along the way. We will ask, receive, and feel transformed—
which is to say, better—by the time the process concludes.
Everywhere in the literature of supplication we come upon this theme.
‘‘God was present, though invisible,’’ declares one of William James’s
praying subjects; ‘‘He fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness

perceived Him.’’ And then, ‘‘It was . . . as if my personality had been trans-
formed by the presence of a spiritual spirit.’’35 We might note here Bollas’s
point that the mother’s appearance in response to the little one’s summons
has an ‘‘apparition-like quality.’’36 ‘‘Prayer has true transformative power,’’
states Terry Lynn Taylor in The Alchemy of Prayer. Not only is God always
there but just by connecting to Him through supplication we are altered
alchemically, our leaden existence turning suddenly to gold.37 To pray,
observes Guardini, is to shed our old being and enter into a nascent state of
spiritual communion at the heart of which resides ‘‘the seed of a new life.’’
This seed, this new life, says Guardini—and here is the early biological
arrangement itself—‘‘is given to us to tend as the new born child is given to
the mother’’ (p. 8). ‘‘Change me into Thyself,’’ cries David of Augsburg (cited
in Heiler, p. 183). ‘‘Take me up and transform me,’’ cries Peter of Alcantara
(cited in Heiler, p. 183). Clearly then, to supplicate along Christian lines,
to indulge the infantile, baptismal model of asking and receiving, is to engage
in what Bollas calls ‘‘the wide-ranging collective search for an object that is
identified with the metamorphosis of the self.’’ The suppliant ‘‘sustains the
terms of the earliest objective tie within a mythic structure’’ (the overall reli-
gious creed). The object (God) is sought for its ‘‘function as a signifier of
transformation.’’ The quest is ‘‘to surrender to it as a medium that alters the
self’’ (Christianity’s ‘‘new man’’ as in Col. 3:10).38 In many instances, of course,
a specific crisis sparks the longing for the transformational presence, as was
exactly the case early on. Yet a basic, underlying motivation of Christian prayer
as a whole is to experience the hit of transformational union over and over again,
in one’s daily existence, just as one experiences it regularly during the addictive,
crisis-laden phase of the initial parent-child interaction. To paraphrase Jesus,
Christians enter a heavenly place when they become as little children
(Matt. 18:3), and there is no better way to become as little children than to
act the role out through the imitative magic of prayer.
With the context firmly in mind, let’s examine a specific, high-quality
guide to successful supplication for Christians. How are they to go about
their praying? What should they expect along the way and at the moment
of truth when the Holy Spirit (or Ghost)39 joins them? Let’s get down to
the nitty-gritty of this magical business. If prayer ‘‘does not well up from
our innermost being,’’ writes Guardini, ‘‘we had better not pray at all’’
(p. 1). Forced prayer is inadvisable. At the same time, successful prayer
depends upon the ‘‘right attitude’’ (p. 3), upon a firm decision to work at
it, frequently and methodically. After all, we are attempting to plant the seed
of a ‘‘new life’’ (p. 8), and unless we plant that seed carefully our spiritual
project will fail. We must always bear in mind, contends Guardini, that our
new life, in contrast with our old, natural one of thoughts and feelings,
is essentially hidden; in fact, ‘‘it rarely penetrates the threshold of cognition’’
(p. 8). Thus, the danger ceaselessly lurks that one may ‘‘neglect it and allow
it to be smothered.’’ How can this be? That is, how can our new life be so pre-
cious to us, so crucial, so all-determining, and at the same time so indistinct,
so elusive, so fragile? The answer lies in the fact that this life emanates from
a spirit, from the ‘‘Holy Ghost’’ (p. 8). It is given to us by God through
the ‘‘Holy Ghost,’’ and we must tend to it as the ‘‘mother’’ tends to her
‘‘new-born child’’ (p. 8).
As Guardini develops this theme over several pages, a number of key ideas
and images emerge. Although we need God and God knows we need Him,
‘‘we cannot perceive’’ Him ‘‘in the manner in which we perceive objects
and people’’ (p. 9). God is ‘‘more real than anything else,’’ and yet He is also
hidden. He can be seen only by ‘‘the inner eye of faith,’’ by an ‘‘inner vision’’
that is ‘‘often clouded’’ (p. 9). In this way, ‘‘we have no immediate experience
of God’’ (p. 9, my emphasis). Only through ‘‘faith’’ may we find him in
‘‘the emptiness and darkness of the unknown’’ (p. 9, my emphasis). It is, notes
Guardini, ‘‘a great mystery’’ (p. 9).40 To prepare ourselves for supplication,
then, we must concentrate; we must ‘‘exclude everything else’’ from our percep-
tion; we must ‘‘recall ourselves from everyone and everywhere.’’ God alone
‘‘matters now’’ (pp. 13–14). We must go inward until we can say with Moses,
‘‘Here am I’’ (Exod. 3:4) (p. 15). Additionally, we must ‘‘awaken our inner
intention’’ so that it may ‘‘focus itself on its object.’’ We must ‘‘clear the inner
eye’’ so that it sees true (p. 16). We must step into that ‘‘mysterious place’’ of
supplication, into that ‘‘centre of power’’ where the self resides, where the self
can ‘‘take root’’ and ‘‘be present’’ (p. 18, my emphasis). What is this mysteri-
ous place? It is ‘‘the realm of the spirit,’’ states Guardini (p. 19), a realm where
we may realize, in the midst of our concentration, that ‘‘God is here,’’ the
‘‘Living,’’ the ‘‘Holy,’’ is here, and ‘‘here also am I’’ (p. 21). Accomplishing
this supplicatory task, observes our theological instructor, means drawing
upon sources that lie deeper in our being, deeper than our ‘‘conscious facul-
ties’’ (p. 21). We have to find the depth of our ‘‘essential being’’ and dwell
therein. Although God is in the world, He is not of the world. When we
say He is present, He ‘‘remains hidden,’’ even as we say it (p. 22). Only our
‘‘faith’’ can sustain us as we ‘‘journey out into this silent darkness’’ (p. 22, my
emphasis), for God is ‘‘as nobody and nothing is. He is from Himself and
by reason of Himself ’’ (p. 24). His attributes, His vibration, His breath alone
are in this world (p. 25). He is that which can’t be named, the ‘‘all-embracing
ineffable,’’ the ‘‘mystery of existence.’’ He has ‘‘no face as we understand it.’’
He is indeed ‘‘beyond all human concept’’ (pp. 25–26). These are the strange,
even astonishing truths that we must digest before we can successfully make
the journey. Guardini then moves closer to the thing itself, recapitulating
key notions in the context as he goes.
With the reader’s permission, I will also head directly toward the goal in a
series of brief, bold strokes. We withdraw to a secluded, silent place; there, we
find ‘‘the sanctuary of our innermost heart’’ in which He is ‘‘always present’’
(p. 35). We try to visualize his reality with our ‘‘inner eye.’’ Alone, concen-
trated, reverent, and kneeling, we achieve what Guardini terms ‘‘the invisible
attitude’’ (p. 39). The experience of prayer now commences: we enter a void
that is ‘‘vibrant with being.’’ We have the feeling He may be present in a
‘‘special, intimate way,’’ close to us, abiding, even though ‘‘we cannot
see Him’’ (p. 43). Then comes the climax: ‘‘into this void of not-seeing,
not-hearing, and not-experiencing, there may at times enter something,
something inexpressible, yet significant—a hint of meaning amidst apparent
nothingness which prevails over the nothingness’’ (p. 44). What is this some-
thing that enters? What is it that is here, that is present with us? What is it
that ‘‘our spiritual organs of perception’’ are detecting (p. 45)? It is, declares
Guardini, a ‘‘breath,’’ a ‘‘vibration,’’ both ‘‘faint and intangible’’ (p. 44).
And he continues, with great conviction,
This breath, this vibration, is the manifestation of God; faint and intangible
though it is, it can support our faith, so that we may persevere. If faith perse-
veres the void may suddenly be filled, for God is not a mere fantasy or idea,
or feeling, but the all-pervading reality. He does not dwell above us indifferent
in the blissful remoteness of celestial spheres, but with us.
(p. 44)
If we want Him, if we wish to have Him in our lives, then we must ask for
Him, seek for Him, cry out for Him in prayer (p. 45). There is no other
way. Prayer alone opens the door to the ‘‘reality of God’’ (p. 45).
What we have here are vividly descriptive, detailed instructions for reach-
ing, not the realm of the Spirit, but the realm of implicit recollection, the
unconscious, the uncanny. We withdraw from everyday reality; we choose
some isolated, solitary spot; there, we turn our attention inward toward
the sphere of our subjectivity; we concentrate intensively as we enter the void,
the mysterious darkness, the deep psychic strata well below the threshold of
our consciousness. What are we looking for in our ‘‘invisible attitude’’? What
is it that we are seeking in our withdrawn, concentrated condition, upon our
knees, reverently, as ‘‘little children’’? We are seeking a hidden spirit with a
nonordinary face and body, a concealed ‘‘centre of power,’’ where the self,
our self, not only takes root but enjoys its essential being. The loving God we
struggle to detect is inextricably connected to us. Then what happens, if all
goes well? We sense that we are not alone; the ‘‘void’’ is filled; something else
is with us; something else is ‘‘present.’’ We detect, perhaps, a breath, or per-
haps a vibration, and as Guardini says, it is enough to convince us that we’ve
made contact. The elusive, hidden, mysterious spirit (Holy Spirit or Holy
Ghost) is there. Intimate union prevails over ‘‘nothingness.’’ As it turns out,
of course, that ‘‘spirit’’ has always been there in a perfectly natural, nonspiri-
tual way. What we’ve contacted through our supplicatory action is the deeply
internalized, synaptic trace of a relationship, not an object or a thing, but a
relationship. More specifically, we’ve rediscovered the origins of our selfhood
in loving, affective attunement, the intimate, awakening interaction from
which our awareness of and participation in the world arose—a breath, a
vibration, a hidden, mysterious, foundational presence, namely, ourselves
and the ministering other in face-to-face, life-sustaining symbiosis. Guardini’s
‘‘void’’ is the great space of memory, the yawning past, the yawning
implicit, unconscious region, the darkness from which we emerge through
the succoring attentions of the apparition-like parental figure who hovers
over us in the beginning. Once again from Buttrick, ‘‘God will be found by
a response [in prayer] to One of whom we are dimly aware—as a child,
half-waking, responds to the mother who bends over him.’’41 Remember,
the caregiver is attuned to our needs. When she responds empathetically to
our requirements, we are filled with wonderful, addictive sensations, vibra-
tions, energies, with our feeling response to her powerful transformational
capacities. Indeed, the caregiver’s loving, feeling ministrations may be said
to awaken us to life, to ‘‘switch us on,’’ to make us ‘‘hum’’ with the feeling
of existence itself. We are alive, we are vibrating, not simply because she
was, but because she communicated her aliveness to us and through us, or
conversely, because her rays, her energies, protected us from the deadness that
the lack of mothering invariably engenders. Our genetic vitality must be nur-
tured into life. It is not the Holy Spirit who does this but another human
being. A person, not a spirit, has this power, which explains why Christianity
paradoxically and passionately and intuitively insists that the Holy Spirit is
both a spirit and a person: the worshiper must be reminded of this person-
hood doctrinally so that he may bring to supplication, as well as to various
other rites and beliefs that foster sacred union, an implicit or feeling recollec-
tion of his own biological life, for it is precisely such recollection that will
trigger the attractor state of parent-child bonding and hence, the worshiper’s
theological, emotional assent to the particulars of the creed, its spiritual
entities and supernatural claims. We pray for many reasons, of course, and
among them is the longing to get back to the source of our aliveness, to feel
still again the indelible, primal ‘‘hit’’ we felt over and over again during the
early time as the caregiver focused her loving energies, her loving rays, upon
us. We eagerly adopt the infantile model of supplication because we would
have that, again and again, just as we had it early on—world without end.
Guardini’s guide to supplication returns us to the period of one common
breathing, one common heartbeat, the period of not only face-to-face but
breast-to-breast contact, of exquisitely sensitive empathetic bonding, of keen,
almost subliminal registration of the smallest bodily sign, the tiniest shift
of mood, of atmosphere, the tiniest stirring of infantile life, the breath,
the vibration of our inchoate existence as it was neurally mapped onto our
emergent mind-brain. This is what we are listening for in Guardini’s ‘‘void.’’
This is what we may detect within our inward organs of perception. Let’s bear
firmly in mind that Guardini asks us (p. 77), as do other doctors of prayer, to
approach the Lord as the child in distress approaches his mother. We are
instructed to return psychologically, attitudinally, perceptually, emotionally
to specifically the first relationship from which our awareness of things arises.
Clearly then, the principles of imitative magic lurk between the lines of Guar-
dini’s Prayer in Practice. His discussion comprises a kind of magical sequence
directed at the self, a kind of self-magic, a kind of self-induced magical trance
that entirely depends upon our empathy toward ourselves, upon our own
keen listening, upon our own keen attention, upon our own keen ability to
detect our essential, originative being, our own relational roots in the mysteri-
ous interactional past of intimate vibrations and breathings. The face of God
is unique, mysterious, and nonordinary because it is both a face and a mirror;
it contains the unconscious lineaments of the relationship in which the self
was born; the body of God is unique, mysterious, nonordinary because it
reflects both a oneness and a twoness, a process of symbiotic joining,
or union, from which a single, living creature emerges into personhood.
‘‘We have no immediate experience of God’’ (p. 9) because our experience
is embedded in the mnemonic recesses of our early existence (the realm of
infantile amnesia), the strong time of life-giving nurturance and vitality when
the parental ‘‘centre of power’’ was our center, our universe, our all. Accord-
ingly, we are able to discover the supernatural realm because we’ve been there
all along; we’ve always existed in a realm of hidden, unseen presences. Guar-
dini is merely guiding us to our own inner world, to the traces of elemental,
affective ‘‘vibrations’’ that resonate at our deepest psychological levels, and
when we find that place we are persuaded and call it ‘‘God’’ or ‘‘Holy Spirit’’
because we have no other perceptual way of explaining it to ourselves.
We can’t see our implicit recollections, of which the Holy Spirit is ultimately
one. There is a mystery here, to be sure, but it is the mystery of the uncon-
scious, not of the supernatural. Everything involved in the Holy Spirit’s
arrival, everything without exception, has been in our minds and only in
our minds all along; or, to turn the coin over, there is nothing involved here
outside of ourselves.
We continually hear from the religious experts that prayer is rooted in the
unconscious, reaches into the unconscious, arises from the unconscious,
engages the unconscious regions, and so forth, but we are never offered any-
thing specific on this score, never told how the process works, and never made
aware of the connections. ‘‘Religious emotions in the pious man,’’ states
Heiler, ‘‘force their way unconsciously and unexpectedly, from evident and
inner necessity, to expression in prayer. Prayer wells up from the subconscious
life of the soul’’ (p. 233). And again, ‘‘Men take over faith in God from the
community in which they were born; but how it first arose cannot here be
discussed; doubtless it flowed from a whole series of psychological forces’’
(p. 3). Prayer, asserts Dossey, is grounded in ‘‘the power of the unconscious
instead of the conscious mind’’; it ‘‘need not always be ‘thought.’ . . . ‘Uncon-
scious prayer’ is possible’’ (p. 18). When we pray successfully, holds James,
‘‘subconscious forces take the lead’’ (p. 195). One’s ‘‘whole subconscious life,’’
one’s ‘‘impulses, . . . faiths, . . . needs, . . . divinations,’’ has ‘‘prepared the
premises of which [one’s] consciousness now feels the weight of the result’’
(p. 73). As for those premises themselves, as for the ‘‘divine personages’’ that
determine the attitudes and practices of the believer, including his supplica-
tion, they are ‘‘exerted by the instrumentality of pure ideas, of which nothing
in the individual’s past experience directly serves as a model’’ (p. 55). We may
now appreciate, however, that something is there in the ‘‘individual’s past
experience’’ that does ‘‘directly serve as a model.’’ I am referring, of course,
to the basic biological situation, internalized deeply into the worshiper’s
mind-brain and explicitly extended in Christian theological handbooks as
the chief imitative prerequisite to successful supplication. No one invented
prayer. It arose from the unconscious strata through the irresistible interac-
tion of neurological structure and wishful affect. It was and still is dedicated
to the emotionally attractive, soothing proposition that we are not separate,
and alone, and impotent, and mortal, in an enigmatic, indifferent universe.
Surely from this perspective we may now grasp why the doctors of prayer
inform us that we receive simply by asking, indeed, that our asking is our
receiving. It goes like this: when we ask we restore the early period; we trigger
in the unconscious the symbiotic union we enjoyed in the beginning; we jog
through our prayerful state the state-dependent memory of our attachment to
the loving provider. Merely to pray, then, is to gain what we are seeking.
The Eucharist
Baptism creates the broad psychological framework within which the prac-
tice of Christianity will move forward, namely, the framework of the parent-
child relationship with Jesus as ‘‘Abba’’ and the practitioner as ‘‘little child’’
following after his parental guide. Prayer, as we’ve just seen, encourages the
worshiper to act out this relationship on a regular basis by adopting an attitude
of helplessness and dependency, by asking the Big One for assistance, love, and
support. When the Christian turns to his Lord as an infant in distress turns to
his mother, to echo the theological experts, he manifests his faith, which is to
say, he establishes himself as a genuine believer in the Christian plan for achiev-
ing ‘‘salvation.’’ With the Eucharist we come to what we may regard as the third
pillar of the ritualistic structure on which the Christian religion is founded, to
what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls ‘‘the source and summit of the
Christian life.’’42 Here, through a ceremony in which the body and the blood
of a god are actually or symbolically consumed, the magical nature of the
believer’s participation, the believer’s construction of his alternate, magical iden-
tity, becomes so palpable, so striking, may I say so transparent, that it has for
2,000 years elicited the critical attention of a wide variety of observers including
ardent, devout Christians themselves. Writes Stafford in Knowing the Face of
God, ‘‘In a sacrificial meal an ox never became other than an ox. The sacrificial
meals were certainly not considered divine flesh. They were mere dead animals
augmented by cereal or oil. Nor is there a precedent in our own experience.
No host has ever asked me if I would like to nibble on him. How, then, can
we understand what Jesus meant?’’ Stafford then declares, ‘‘It was not entirely
unjust that the early Christians were accused of cannibalism. Any religion that
has a meal for its sacramental centerpiece and that speaks of eating the flesh
and the blood of its God is asking for misunderstanding.’’43 With an eye
focused sharply on the potential for ‘‘misunderstanding,’’ then, let’s begin to
examine both what Jesus may have ‘‘meant’’ by all this and what all this means
to us from the naturalistic, analytical angle we’re developing here.
John Wesley’s famous devotional poem takes us straight to the essence of
the matter.
Ah, show me that happiest place,

The place of Thy people’s abode,
Where saints in an ecstasy gaze,
And hang on a crucified God.
’Tis there I would always abide

And never a moment depart,
Concealed in the cleft of Thy side,

Eternally held in Thy heart.44
Here is the core magical wish of the Christian religion as a whole: to enter
(or better, reenter) the body of the Parent-God and to remain in that body
forever, ‘‘eternally’’ as Wesley renders it. Christianity seeks to transform,
to metamorphose, to turn inside out or upside down nothing less than
the chief biological facts of our earthly existence, namely, the cessation of
infantile symbiosis, our separation from the original matrix of parental care;
our smallness, our vulnerability to the forces of nature, to the implacable
material world of accident and illness; and last, of course, our mortality,
the final, inevitable manifestation of the biological circumstance in which
we discover ourselves. All of this is simply erased as we crawl into the crucified
Jesus, using the wound in His side as our entrance way, and take up our
permanent residence there as ‘‘members’’ or ‘‘organs’’ of His sacred body.
Suddenly, magically, we are eternally secure, united with an all-powerful
protector and provider whose chief preoccupation and purpose in the world
is (like mother’s) neither more nor less than watching over us.
The biological facts of separation, smallness, and death are biblically pre-
sented in the Book of Genesis where the writer endeavors to explain why an
omnipotent, loving God would fashion such harsh realities for his specially
created offspring, His children. Adam and Eve, god-like, immortal, and
enjoying regular, consistent contact with their beneficent, all-powerful
Creator, succumb to the wiles of Satan (originally a diabolic figure in dualistic
Zoroastrianism appropriated by the ancient Hebrews) and immediately
lose their utopian advantages: they are separated from the paradisal garden
and its parental Designer; they are vulnerable to the adversarial forces
of their new, fallen surroundings against which they must now struggle
mightily and continuously; and finally, they must die and disappear
from the world forever—the most chilling result of their disobedience
to God’s injunctions. As for the advent of Jesus Christ in relation to the
Old Testamental depiction of our fallen, tragical nature, He arrives upon
the earth to put everything right again, to achieve, or better, reachieve,
the beginning, the strong time of loving union, empowered security,
and immortality as expressed in both baptismal rite and in the verses of
John Wesley, to which the reader’s attention was directed a few sentences
earlier. In a word, the advent of Jesus creates for the Christian a way to get back
in the paradisal garden his forebears lost, to regain the salvational arrangement
the Bible depicts in its opening passages. In the naturalistic terms I am
employing here, the Christian now possesses a magical, ritualistic method
to cancel out, to erase, to remove from the landscape the biological facts of
separation, smallness, and death that comprise the sorrowful conditions
of his ‘‘fallen’’ planetary journey.
What interests us here above all is the way in which the mythical materials in
the Book of Genesis simultaneously echo and veil the biological realities upon
which our lives are based. We are separated (or expelled) from the garden of
infantile, child-like innocence, as we develop toward adolescence and maturity;
we are deprived of our initial grandeur, our narcissistic omnipotence, as
our global identification with the parental big one gradually fades off; our
symbiotic, dependent relationship with our provider, our feeder, does ultimately
terminate as we begin to make our own way in a challenging and frequently dif-
ficult environment; we do confront eventually our own personal mortality, our
own personal demise and disappearance from the world: one day, as everyone
else preceding us and following us, we will be bodily, sensorially gone. All of this
reverberates beneath the mythical surface of Genesis which, as I’ve suggested
already, was fashioned by Hebrew scribes with a very good sense of the human
condition and a very strong urge to indicate how that condition arose in a
Creation molded by a loving Parent-God upon Whose mercies they relied
and to Whom they addressed their prayers.
The connection between ‘‘sin’’ and separation is a key item, of course, and
reflects in itself the biological reality of the first society, or the personal, pri-
vate Eden in which each of us discovers himself early on. When the child is
‘‘bad,’’ he or she experiences the diminishment of his or her affective affilia-
tion with or closeness to the governing parental presence; such looming
separation serves as a powerful incentive for the child to ‘‘behave.’’ Yet no
matter how ‘‘good’’ the child is, no matter how carefully he or she follows
the rules, he or she must still one day undergo separation from the initial
symbiotic interaction. Accordingly, the Edenic materials in the Book of
Genesis trigger in the believer foundational, implicit recollection of his
actual, developmental experience as he moves from primal union, from pri-
mal symbiotic bonding with the big one, toward his present, grown-up con-
dition of separation, smallness, and mortality. At the same time, the magical,
supernatural reversal of that ‘‘fallen’’ condition, its veiling, its erasure, its
cancellation, is also linked to biological facts, is also connected integrally to
biological conditions that are deeply grooved into our neurological makeup
at the level of implicit or unconscious memory. I mean, the supernatural
reversal, the veiling, the solution in short, also carries within itself the first
Edenic conditions of symbiotic union and narcissistic perfection that the
believer actually experienced at the biological level during the opening
months and years of his earthly existence. They too reside in the realm of
implicit memory; they too are rooted firmly, neurologically, and synaptically
in the unconscious realm of infantile amnesia and can thus be utilized on the
plane of magic. When the good news comes to supplant the bad news, it finds
its origins in the same biological place from which the bad news emanated.
The believer was at one time in, not out; the believer did know at one time
that someone was always there, watching over him. When Jesus enters with
his ‘‘comedic’’ resolution of life’s ‘‘tragedy’’ (restoration of Edenic perfection,
the cleansing of ‘‘sin,’’ and the saintly transcendence and immortality of each
and every sheep-like follower), He relies as do all talented healers and gurus
upon the biological realities the believers once experienced for themselves
during the course of their own lives. Salvation cannot be based on air,
on ‘‘spirits,’’ on words alone; it must also be based on flesh, for it is flesh
ultimately that prompts accession, that arouses the ‘‘yes, I believe’’ in the
candidate, in the prospective convert. The Savior’s invitation back into
the Garden feels real because the Garden is still there at the level of implicit,
biological, affective or fleshly memory.
To put the whole matter somewhat differently and in the process to recall
our earlier discussion of prayer’s nature and efficacy, when Jesus offers to
His followers His Edenic salvational scheme of divine union (‘‘we . . . are
one body in Christ’’ [Rom. 12:5]), saintly cleansing (‘‘called to be saints’’
[I Cor. 1:2]), and immortality (‘‘O death, where is thy sting?’’ [I Cor. 15:55]),
when He invites His devotees to go back in, to enter His body, which is the
Church itself in its pure, Edenic, sinless condition, He awakens the Holy Spirit
in the worshiper, which means, He jogs the early, implicit recollection of actual,
biological experience, of infantile, childhood security, protection, provision,
and love that resides neurologically, mnemonically, at the foundation of
the worshiper’s mental apparatus. The early period of symbiotic, biologic
interaction is mythically reentered or resubmitted into the mind-brain such
that it calls forth the implicit, unconscious, feeling recollection of the desired
salvational condition. In the simplest possible terms, to be ‘‘saved’’ Christian
style, one must be ‘‘innocent’’ as a baby is innocent; and one must be attached
to or contained in the body of a Parent-God, or a God/Church that is the
body of a Parent-God (Jesus’s body [I Cor. 12:27]). One must be in an organ
relationship. Salvation is finally morphological and entails the interfusion of
bodies, which is the vital, primal essence of neotenous, human, biological
infancy and childhood. When this essence is reexperienced mnemonically,
when it is reentered into the perceptual apparatus disguisedly yet recogniz-
ably through sacred myth and magical rite—in short, when this essence is
experienced again through state-dependent memory it precipitates the emer-
gence of associative affect known doctrinally as ‘‘the Holy Spirit.’’45 One can
feel his own salvation, and the truth of Christian doctrine, because one har-
bors a premanufactured version of both in his own neurologic, memorial
makeup. ‘‘Yes,’’ says the convert, in the grip of his wishful emotions; ‘‘I can
be saved; I can unite with Christ; I can be pure and innocent; I can escape
extinction; the Edenic message is true; Paradise can be regained. Hallelulia!’’
In this way, the entire magical, mythical structure of Christianity, as founded
on the Old and New Testaments, and especially on the New Testamental
notion of the Holy Spirit, is rooted in the biological experience of the
worshiper and in nothing else. Paradoxically revealed and veiled in the same
mythic, magical, religious moment, Christian theology provides the believer
with an alternate ‘‘spiritual’’ self in which he can defensively or adaptively
indulge himself while the biological facts and destiny of his actual bodily life
simply go forward on the earth. No wonder the Holy Spirit is regarded by the
Christian faith as ‘‘the Comforter.’’46 It, the Holy Spirit, provides the reli-
gious seeker with the implicit memorial materials that goad him or in a very
real sense ‘‘spook’’ him into accepting the reality of supernatural entities with
the capacity to alter, metamorphose, and transform the ineluctable biological
facts of separation, smallness, and death to which his earthly existence is and
always will be irreversibly linked.
The Eucharist’s significance from this analytic angle comes clearly into
view: it, the Eucharist, provides the believer with a magic, ritualistic way to
get into the body of Jesus, and to get Jesus’s body into his own. It is psycho-
logically morphological, devoted to the interfusion of bodies. Let’s remember,
the rite of baptism from which the believer emerges newborn as the ‘‘little
child’’ of the Parent-God is officially, theologically, doctrinally completed in
and through the Eucharist wherein the worshiper becomes ‘‘a living member
of,’’ indeed ‘‘ingrafted to,’’ the ‘‘body’’ of Jesus Christ, either symbolically as
in various Protestant enactments, or ‘‘transubstantially’’ as in Catholic and
High Protestant practices.47 Accordingly, the Eucharist allows the worshiper
to reinstate mnemonically the organ relationship, the morphological interfu-
sion, that distinguishes his initial biological condition, the opening circum-
stance of his existence on the planet. His baptismal, Eucharistic state
achieves as its implicit, dynamic underpinning the neurological, state-
dependent memory of what he actually knew and relied upon during the
months and years in which his neotenous, helpless condition made him
utterly dependent on the big one for his survival and well-being. He fed
upon the caregiver physically and emotionally in order to have life, and now
he does so again. Here, precisely here, is the origin of the magical, homeo-
pathic, alternate identity with which Christianity provides its followers
to ensure not only their sense of security as they go about their lives but also
their passionate attachment to the creed, their wish, their longing to cleave
unto the Church, a Church that offers itself to the worshiper as literally the
body of Christ.48 Separation, smallness, mortality; our biological heritage;
the consequence of our putative lapse in the Garden of Eden—all of that
vanishes miraculously when we eat the Lord’s flesh and drink the Lord’s
blood, thus getting Him inside of us and us inside of Him. The worshiper
gets ‘‘hooked’’ on his religion, or alternatively, surrenders to the Holy Spirit
working within him, when the implicit recollection of his original biological
dependency (the ‘‘opiate’’) bites mythically into his emotive memorial
structure. It helps markedly, of course, that such magical goings-on transpire
within cathedrals and churches, otherworldly, mysterious, cultic habitations
in which priestly, ‘‘spiritual’’ emissaries from the beyond, attired in special,
distinguishing garb, administer the miraculous bread and wine. Kneeling
with open mouths, the bedazzled ‘‘little children,’’ the religious seekers,
take in their transformational materials like little birds, trusting in the
all-powerful Big One to give them union, protection, and everlasting life:
‘‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,/let me hide myself in thee,’’ or as Wesley put it
in the verses at which we earlier glanced, ‘‘concealed in the cleft of Thy
side,/Eternally held in Thy heart.’’
Let’s recall Jesus’s New Testamental pronouncements on the ingestion of
His flesh and blood:
Verily, verily I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and
drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh
my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh
is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and
drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent
me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
(John 6:53–57)
Thus are we returned to the Beginning, to the strong time of our inception:
the flesh and blood of Jesus, who has taken the place of the biological parent
(Matt. 10:35–38) and become the Parent-God of His newly baptized ‘‘little
children’’ (Matt. 18:3), give ‘‘life’’ explicitly to His followers, His offspring,
creating them afresh and altered along magical, ritualistic lines. When His
devotees, His communicants, eat His flesh and drink His blood, they abolish
ego boundaries; they restore the stage of symbiotic oneness, the initial bio-
logical condition that precedes the passage to the separation stage of develop-
ment. The partakers ‘‘dwell’’ in their Parent-God, and their Parent-God
dwells in them, with no separation stage in view. The organic interfusion, the
morphological mixing of bodies, goes on forever, ‘‘eternally’’ as John Wesley
wished it to do in the devotional poem with which I opened this section.

Separation, smallness, and mortality simply vanish from the individual
Christian’s brand-new salvational existence on the planet. The perfections of
Eden are regained, once and for all. How does the magician express it as he
pulls the curtain away from his ingenious, unfathomable contraption?
‘‘Presto chango!’’ In reality, of course, the Christian’s new, infantilized nature
(or the restoration of his prelapsarian self ) derives entirely from his own
implicit recollection of dyadic parent-child unity during the primal portion
of his own biological life. The magical Eucharistic state triggers the state-
dependent memory, designated by Christians themselves as the elusive,
airborne, transcendental Holy Spirit. ‘‘We are members of his body, of his
flesh, and of his bones,’’ declare the Scriptures (Eph. 5:30). We are ‘‘sealed’’
in Christ forever through the working of the ‘‘Holy Spirit’’ (Eph. 4:30).
Note the way in which recent Christian literature corroborates the gist of the
previous paragraph. The Lord’s Supper, writes Gerhard O. Forde, following
Luther closely, ‘‘gives us life—actually and literally.’’49 Jesus comes ‘‘into’’ our
‘‘human flesh,’’ our ‘‘mouths,’’ our ‘‘hearts’’ in what is ultimately an ‘‘invasion
of our isolation’’ (p. 87). The old, lonely, tragic ‘‘Adam’’ is ‘‘put to death’’ as a
‘‘new man’’ arises through the working of ‘‘the Spirit’’ (p. 86). Once we’ve par-
taken of the miraculous ‘‘body and blood,’’ Christ ‘‘is never absent’’ from our
lives (p. 82).
Through our participation in the sacraments of Christianity, holds
H. Richard Niebuhr, through our ‘‘faith’’ in baptismal and Eucharistic rites as
they are mediated by the ‘‘Holy Spirit,’’ we gain not simply a ‘‘historic’’ indi-
vidual named Jesus but an ‘‘inner personal companion,’’ a divine, beneficent
‘‘person’’ who dwells permanently in our ‘‘memory’’ and ‘‘expectation.’’50
We ‘‘cannot and do not live except in this companionship,’’ declares Niebuhr.
‘‘He does not let me go and I cannot let him go.’’ Indeed, ‘‘Christ is the per-
sonal companion who has been engrafted into my personal existence’’
(p. 105). Could it be put more emphatically than that?
Asserts Stafford, ‘‘I cannot think of any aspect of Christianity that the
Lord’s Supper does not touch.’’51 As Christians ‘‘we draw our life’’ from
Jesus’s blood and body. The transformational bread ‘‘gets inside you.
It becomes part of you. . . . He Himself comes to us and gets inside of us,’’ just
as we, by eating, ‘‘participate in Jesus Himself, in His life and His power’’
(pp. 93–94). Nor does it finally matter, says Stafford, whether we take the Eu-
charist transubstantially or symbolically: ‘‘a symbol in the best sense is the
kernel of reality.’’ Jesus ‘‘becomes part of us. God offers us a meal not sym-
bolically but really. Those who say that the bread and wine are symbols and
those who say they are the real substance of Christ are not as far apart as they
sometimes think’’ (p. 96). The sacrifice of Jesus and our partaking of the Holy
Supper are a ‘‘living reality’’ (p. 97). What Stafford intuits here is the extent to
which the Eucharist, accomplished along both Catholic and Protestant lines,
has the associative power to penetrate the communicant all the way down to
the foundational levels of his mind wherein reside the ‘‘most intimate’’ affective
wishes of his human life.
Clearly then, Eucharistic magic as it follows upon baptismal regeneration
from which the Christian emerges as a ‘‘little child’’ of the explicitly parental
Deity provides the worshiper with exactly what he craves in his ‘‘fallen,’’ bio-
logical condition of smallness, separation, and mortality: an ‘‘inner personal
companion’’ who is always there, even in the hour of death. ‘‘He will not let
me go.’’ The practicing follower of Christ will never be alone again, will never
be separated from his loving Protector and Provider, will never be out as
opposed to in, will never be at the mercy of the biological forces to which
raw nature exposes him. The curses of ‘‘life’’ as we know them ordinarily
are lifted. Interfused with, ingrafted to, sealed into, contained within and also
containing Christ’s body, Christ’s person (remember, the Holy Spirit is a
person), the Christian only seems to be walking around on his own, a small,
separate, vulnerable mortal man or woman. In the alternate, magical ‘‘reality’’
of his baptismal, Eucharistic state, with Jesus in his belly, the Big One in his
prayers, and the Holy Spirit suffusing his existence from within, he is just
the opposite: ‘‘perfectly united’’ (Fisher, p. 406) with his Parent-God in
whose ‘‘power’’ (Stafford, p. 94) he participates, and headed toward heavenly,
everlasting bliss rather than a dreary grave. Here is the substitutional, homeo-
pathic identity the Christian seeks at the deep, primal levels of his anxious,
mortal frame. Here is the world of the ‘‘Holy Spirit’’ in which he may feel-
ingly luxuriate forevermore, ‘‘saved’’ as he is from what the poor, tragical rest
of us must undergo and endure.
Note the dynamic, unforgettable expression of all this transformational
magic in Great Christian Prayers.52 Read the following lines with the theoretical
context of this section sharply in focus.
I know that the Immovable comes down;

I know that the invisible appears to me;
I know that He who is far outside the whole creation
Takes me within Himself and hides me in His arms,
And then I find myself outside the whole world.
I, a frail, small mortal in the world,
Behold the Creator of the world, all of Him, within myself;
And I know that I shall not die, for I am within the Life,
I have the whole of life springing up as a fountain within me.
He is in my heart, He is in heaven:
Both there and here He shows Himself to me with equal glory.
(Saint Symeon, p. 70)
Saint Symeon’s words literally sum up the naturalistic, psychological approach

to Christianity that we’ve offered in this book to this point. The original sym-
biosis is magically restored. The little one is again within the big one, safely
‘‘hidden’’ in the parental ‘‘arms’’ of the ‘‘Creator.’’ The ‘‘frail, small mortal’’
discovers the omnipotent God ‘‘within’’ himself. He is now immortal, with
the ‘‘whole of life’’ miraculously ‘‘springing up’’ within him. The bugbears
of separation, smallness, and death are simply banished.
Note these famous, supplicatory verses attributed to Saint Patrick:
I bind unto myself today

The power of God to hold and lead;
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to harken to my need. . . .
Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity.
(Saint Patrick, p. 77)
Could there be a more vivid expression of proceeding through life with an

alternate, invisible companion or presence created through homeopathic or
imitative magic (‘‘I bind unto myself today,’’ etc.)? Christ is everywhere, in
every nook and cranny of the writer’s existence. These verses come across,
ultimately, as obsessional, even possessed. They speak for the total absorption
of the writer into the fantastic, supernatural Redeemer.
Here is another prayerful example, attributed this time to Saint Bernardine:
We rejoice, O Lord our God, in Thy almighty power and glory. Raise Thou us
up with Thee, O Blessed Savior, above all earthly desires. Inspire us with
thoughts of joy, of hope and love. Enter Thou within the chamber of our hearts,
and say unto us, Peace be unto you. Give us the grace to see Thee, blessed Sav-
iour, the eyes of our understanding being enlightened, that we may know Thee
walking by our side, in this our earthly pilgrimage. Come unto us, O our Lord,
and dwell within us.
(Saint Bernardine, p. 86)
Here is the image of the companion Himself ‘‘walking by the side’’ of the
Christian believer, indeed ‘‘dwelling’’ within the believer’s ‘‘heart’’ as ego
boundaries dissolve. How does that famous old Christian tune go? ‘‘And
He walks with me,/And He talks with me,/And He tells me I am His own.’’
Have we hallucination in all this? Mildly, we do. But in the main, we have
the powerful sensation of the person (the Holy Spirit) being there as that
sensation arises from the realm of implicit recollection, or state-dependent
memory. When the religious magic bites, it creates in the worshiper an
inward state that affectively recalls the symbiotic arrangement of the early
time that was taken indelibly into the memorial apparatus.
Finally we have, from our own era,
O Lord God, I thank Thee that Thou leadest me by a way which I know not,
which is above the level of my poor understanding. I thank Thee that Thou
are not repelled by my bitterness, that Thou are not turned aside by the heat
of my spirit. There is no force in this universe so glorious as the force of Thy
love; it compels me to come in. O divine servitude, O slavery that makes me
free, O love that imprisons me only to set my feet in a larger room, enclose
me more and more within Thy folds. Protect me from the impetuous desires
of my nature—desires as short-lived as they are impetuous. Ask me not where
I would like to go; tell me where to go; lead me in Thine own way; hold me
in Thine own light. Amen.
(George Matheson, p. 181)
Here is the wishful, appetitive ‘‘surrender’’ to the implicitly recollected big

one who ‘‘led the way’’ early on, who offered protection, love, and infallible
guidance, who told the little child (Matt. 18:3) what was good for him in a
relational pattern of dependency designed to assure the survival of an utterly
helpless biological specimen who would take the pattern in so deeply and
firmly that it would never be forgotten or relinquished but become the
inspiration of a magical, alternate, religious identity later on.
Accordingly, if we had to boil Christianity down to a single psychological
longing on the part of the worshiper, it would be the longing to contain
and be contained in the Big One, just as one was contained early on, before
the stern biological facts of one’s planetary journey emerged fully into one’s
awareness. When the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Eucharist
in one place as the ‘‘heart and summit of the Church’s life’’ and contends in
another place that the Church’s ‘‘message is in harmony with the most secret
desires of the human heart,’’53 it forges for us a connection the ultimate sig-
nificance of which we can now fully see and understand. It is the primary
psychological meaning of the Eucharist that comprises not only the ‘‘heart’’
of the Church but ‘‘the most secret desires of the human heart,’’ namely, the
intertwining desires to be inside the Big One and to have the Big One inside
oneself. The worshiper, the churchgoer, does not want to confront the uni-
verse alone; he wants to confront it as he did during the opening stages of
his existence when someone was there. We are not in the realm of the miracu-
lous divine here, the realm of ‘‘ultimately inexpressible mystery,’’ as Maurice
Wiles puts it in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity.54 Indeed, the
so-called mystery arises only from the difficulties attendant upon psychologi-
cally deciphering the magical system conjured up by Christian thought and
practice. From where, after all, could the powerful emotions and devotions
of Christ’s followers come if not from the flesh and blood experiences of their
own actual lives? The Holy Spirit is a person, an actual person, because persons
and only persons make up the foundational core of our earthly being. We’re
the only ones home.
Moment-to-Moment Christianity
Reborn as God’s ‘‘little child’’ through one’s ongoing baptismal frame of
mind, persistently ‘‘asking and receiving’’ (Mark 11:24) as the Lord’s helpless,
needy, prayerful petitioner, ingesting and mixing bodily with the Almighty
on a regular basis through Eucharistic rite—here is the central outline of
the Christian’s alternate, magical identity, the homeopathic other self that
transcends one’s stark biological condition, the imperfect handiwork of post-
lapsarian nature. Yet all this is not enough—far from it! To make the transfor-
mation more thorough, to approximate the goal of escaping the small,
separate, mortal state in which one discovers himself on earth, to accomplish
the Beginning all over again by resurrecting the symbiotic union of loving
caregiver and sheltered offspring, the Christian must go about his daily life,
his routines, his normal activities and commissions, in a mental and emo-
tional attitude of total, unremitting, moment-to-moment dependency on
the supernatural Big One. His frame of mind, his mode of being, his entire
existence in every aspect of it, must imitate, act out, magically recreate
the relationship of the impotent, powerless, vulnerable child in the care of
the protective, succoring parent (the inner companion). Everywhere in the
literature of Christianity this theme is ceaselessly, ardently trumpeted forth
in a stream of remarkable, unforgettable passages that demand psychological
explanation and that are inspired directly by Jesus’s New Testamental pro-
nouncement, ‘‘without me ye can do nothing’’ (John 15:5), a pronouncement
the Catechism of the Catholic Church dutifully echoes as follows: ‘‘without
Him we can do nothing.’’55
State Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King in their reverential
Experiencing God,
He alone has the right to initiate what you are to be involved in. . . . As you
respond to Him in simple, childlike trust, you will find a whole new way of
looking at life to begin for you. Your life will be fulfilling. You will never have
to sense an emptiness or lack of purpose. He always fills your life with
Himself.56
They continue,
He calls you to a relationship where He is Lord—where you are willing to do

anything He chooses. . . . God’s assignments come to you on a daily basis. . . .
A yoke is an instrument built for two oxen to work together. Jesus’ invitation
is for you to get into His yoke with Him. . . . God is crying out to us, don’t just
stand there! Enter into a love relationship with Me.
(pp. 30–31)
And then, in a decisive utterance that repeats the words of Christ and the Cat-
echism just cited: ‘‘without Him you can do nothing’’ (p. 31). Allow me to
offer a few more lines from Blackaby and King so as to capture the full flavor
of their thinking. ‘‘Lord, just tell me what to do one step at a time and I will
do it. . . . Just tell me where I am heading, then I will be able to set my course
and go. . . . Wherever you want me to be, I’ll go. Whatever the circum-
stances, I’m willing to follow’’ (pp. 32–33). And again, ‘‘if I do everything
He says, I will be in the center of His will. . . . God is absolutely trustworthy.
You can trust Him to guide you and provide for you’’ (pp. 34–36). In this
way, you can be ‘‘dependent on God above’’ (p. 42). He will ‘‘do through
you whatever He chooses, anything He pleases’’ (p. 46). And finally, in a
heartfelt supplication Blackaby and King declare, ‘‘God, I know I can do
nothing on my own. I know You can do anything You choose to do. I give
myself completely to You. Work through me any way You want to work’’
(p. 48). At only one stage of our lives does a single, all-powerful provider
and protector fill our entire universe. At only one stage are we yoked to
another in an organic, dyadic relationship of absolute trust, absolute love,
upon which our survival and well-being entirely depend. At only one stage
does our whole existence consist in following after a big one from whom
we fully and absolutely derive our guidance. At only one stage do we give our-
selves over completely to the will of a monumental controller. What we have
here are instructions for reawakening the early period, for reexperiencing
the movement of the caregiver within the realm of our implicit recollection.
And sure enough, as Blackaby and King make clear, if we do all this, if we
actually imitate (homeopathic magic) the behavior of a ‘‘simple child’’ to
employ their terminology, we ‘‘square ourselves up’’ with the ‘‘Holy Spirit’’
(p. 114) who begins to stir powerfully within us—which is to say, we begin
actually to rekindle the sensations of the initial symbiosis as they reside in
the mnemonic attractor state toward which we dutifully gravitate as we obey
Christianity’s instructions for our supernatural transformation. The magical
system, in the last analysis, is quite simple and straightforward: imitate the
early stages of your life (act like a child) within this lofty, mystifying, religious
context and you’ll arouse a variety of powerful, soothing, delicious sensations
that seem to come miraculously from within and that may be easily attached
to putative spiritual entities that your cognitive apparatus ultimately accepts
as ‘‘there,’’ particularly when such entities are theologically urged upon you
by authoritative figures such as parents, priests, and pastors.
The Holy Spirit, assert Henry Cloud and John Townsend, is ‘‘not a thing’’
but a ‘‘person.’’57 If we ‘‘yield’’ to the Almighty, if we ‘‘follow’’ Him, if we ‘‘cry
to Him’’ for succor and support, ‘‘He will come,’’ and not only come but,
through the Holy Spirit, ‘‘abide’’—which is to say ‘‘live in us’’ (the inner
companion) (p. 99). When that occurs, we ‘‘don’t have to live alone’’ ever
again (separation reversed), and we don’t have to exist ‘‘in our own power’’
ever again (relinquishment of autonomy). He will be ‘‘there’’ for us always
(pp. 98, 104). Accordingly, we must conceive of our relationship to the
Almighty, to Christ, and to the Holy Spirit—and here are the crucial
words—as a ‘‘moment-to-moment relationship of dependency’’ in which we
‘‘yield and follow,’’ in which we surrender all ‘‘control,’’ in which we fully
‘‘submit’’ (the dyadic essence of the early period) (p. 99). This, hold Cloud
and Townsend, is the ‘‘formula’’ for eternal salvation, the formula that ‘‘woos
us to Jesus,’’ that transforms and transfigures us (pp. 94, 99). ‘‘Remember,’’
they write, ‘‘He will come to live inside you’’ (again, the inner companion);
indeed, He will ‘‘invade’’ you if you ‘‘ask and then follow’’ (p. 99). What we
have in this, needless to say, is a striking, vivid counterpart to what we’ve just
discovered in Blackaby and King. Let’s sample a few more counterparts.
‘‘I need help! I can’t do it alone,’’ explains Rev. Schuller, indicating for his
readers the proper Christian posture in the presence of the all-powerful
Deity.58 ‘‘Cry out, surrender, ask for help,’’ Schuller admonishes, and do it
all the time as you adopt a ‘‘Be-Happy Attitude’’ toward your Savior, through
the Holy Spirit (p. 21). In other words, pray continuously, ‘‘face up to your
emotional lack, admit your weakness, stop trying to do it all by yourself ’’
(p. 28). Query your Heavenly Father as follows, Schuller persists: ‘‘Can you
help me? Can you direct me?’’ (p. 31). Confess to Him, ‘‘I’m helpless! I’m
ready to let go and let God take over’’ (p. 33). ‘‘Are you there, Jesus?’’ Schuller
urges us to ask. ‘‘Do You love me as much as I love you?’’ (p. 30). Could there
be a more compelling example of the Christian’s struggle to refind, recontact,
and reactualize the relationship of ‘‘moment-to-moment dependency’’ that he
enjoyed during life’s opening stages as he cleaved unto the Big One in whose
elemental, life-sustaining care he discovered himself? For the Christian, sim-
ply to mature biologically is to lose inward security, a life-defining loss that
drives him to indulge in magical behaviors through which (he believes) he
may regain security: ‘‘Christ, come to live in me. . . . Oh, God, I turn my life
over to You’’ (Schuller, p. 41). Now I am ‘‘a child of God’’ (p. 115). Here is
the ‘‘formula’’ indeed. Here is the naturalistic, psychological system of inward
reattachment to the original caregiver that dwells at the heart of Christianity
under the designation of ‘‘Holy Spirit.’’
‘‘We were never designed by God to function independently,’’ asserts
Anderson indelibly in his volume Who I Am in Christ,59 with the in recalling
our analysis of Eucharistic ‘‘function,’’ namely, to place the believer back into
the body of the big one, back into the symbiotic, organ relationship of the
early period, a ‘‘function’’ that applies to Christianity across the broad range
of its teachings and rituals. Whatever leads us to ‘‘function’’ on our own,
autonomously, as independent organisms on the earth, is rejected, repudi-
ated, and through homeopathic magic (rebirth and reattachment to the
supernatural Parent-God) inverted, or turned upside down. ‘‘Without
Christ,’’ claims Anderson, ‘‘we are incomplete.’’ With Christ, which is to
say in Christ, ‘‘we are made complete and fulfilled’’ (p. 98). God says to us,
‘‘You don’t need other people to make you happy; you need only Me. . . .
No other person can fill the vacuum. You were created to relate to God in
soul-union, and you can only find rest and purpose in your life’’—and here
are the vital words—‘‘when you put your total dependence on Him,’’ which
is but another way of describing, holds Anderson, a worshiper who is ‘‘filled
with the Spirit’’ (p. 99). Anderson declares in a powerful concluding state-
ment that calls to mind again both John 15:5 and the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, ‘‘If I am not operating by the power of the Holy Spirit,
I can accomplish nothing. I am complete only in Christ’’ (p. 99, my emphasis).
From our analytic, psychological perspective we may understand Anderson’s
final remarks this way: only when I recapture through the homeopathic
magic of Christian rite and doctrine the symbiotic union of the early period
and actually feel myself in that original, life-sustaining, one-to-one dyadic

unity (‘‘soul-union with God’’) can I experience in my separate condition as
a grown-up human being the perfect security and emotional fulfillment
I hungrily, even desperately seek. As a typical Christian, I can be happy only
in a state of emotional, psychological merger with a parental big one.
For me, functioning independently is a distress.
According to Stafford, ‘‘God does not relate to us only from the outside,
as our friends do. Through the Holy Spirit, God gets inside us and forms a
unity with us. He is there as an active and personal influence.’’60 Stafford
continues,
The Spirit teaches us about God and also creates in us the faith that makes
us love that knowledge. Theologians have been driven to despair by this fact:
We cannot speak objectively about God; only through the eyes of faith may
we speak truly of Him. . . . His own Spirit is the light in which we see Him.
(p. 32)
And finally,
I want to reclaim the sense that God’s personality fills the earth. He is every-
where we turn, holding Himself out to us, asking to be known. . . . Jesus is all
around you. . . . His personality is spilling out on every side. . . . If you can begin
to see His personality as Himself, I think you will pursue the means of grace
with clearer eyes and greater excitement.
(p. 33)
Alright then, we may ask, how does one accomplish this? How does one
discover the Holy Spirit, and through the Holy Spirit his ‘‘faith’’ in God?
How does one manage to live in a world in which a personal, loving, unifying
presence ‘‘fills’’ one’s reality, is ‘‘everywhere,’’ ‘‘all around’’ one, ‘‘spilling out
on every side,’’ as was the case exactly during the early period when the
biological parent entirely filled, entirely sustained one’s universe?
Stafford wastes no time in informing us. To ‘‘know God’’ through the
‘‘Spirit,’’ he declares—and here are the crucial words, ‘‘we must be dependent
on Him’’ (p. 32). We must be born again as His ‘‘small children’’ (p. 40).
We must address Him with the ‘‘babyish terms’’ Abba or ‘‘Daddy’’ (pp. 40, 45).
We must follow the direction of the New Testament and put Him in the
parent’s place, telling Him, ‘‘I love you’’ (p. 45). We must recognize through
the Holy Spirit, ‘‘Who plants this seed of love in us,’’ that God gives us
‘‘everything we need for life’’ (pp. 28, 45). And finally, we must accept our
‘‘dependence’’ upon Him as never-ending, as ‘‘eternal’’ (p. 148). God ‘‘loves
us as His little children,’’ as a ‘‘parent’’ who is willing to ‘‘sacrifice his life’’ for
his offspring, asserts Stafford, and we must never fail to ‘‘remember our utter
dependence upon His care’’ (pp. 56, 143). Can anyone fail to see what we
have here? We have the same magical system of thought and conduct that
we found in this section’s contextual authors. When the worshiper thinks like
a child, acts like a child, approaches his explicitly parental Deity as a small,
needy, dependent child approaches the parental big one who watches over
him—in short, when the worshiper refashions imitatively the primal child-
hood mentation and behavior upon which his actual biological existence is
founded, he triggers the implicit, feeling recollection of both his original, vul-
nerable self and the loving, provisional caregiver who nurtured him toward
his maturity, who mitigated his discomforts and anxieties, who simply kept
him alive in his helpless, defenseless, condition as a neotenous newcomer.
Thus, the worshiper ‘‘knows God’’ through a ‘‘Holy Spirit’’ that is those early,
precious, powerful recollections and longings as they are repositioned out-
wardly (or projectively) into the putative supernatural sphere and then loved
all over again in the exuberance of passionate rediscovery and theological
idealization: God’s love for us is perfect, unconditional, and everlasting.
The worshiper resides in Christ and Christ in the worshiper, forevermore.
Here is a final example, one that takes us to what we might think of as the
outer limits of this particular aspect of magical Christian behavior. Having
seen Jesus in her mind as ‘‘God wrapped in human flesh,’’ having told Him,
‘‘I love You,’’ having cried out to Him ‘‘I open my heart and invite You to
come live within me,’’ and ‘‘I surrender all that I am to Your authority,’’ Anne
Graham Lotz feels herself totally ‘‘filled with the Spirit.’’ She then asks the
reader, in reference to this last item, ‘‘what does that mean?’’ This is her
answer: ‘‘To be filled with His Spirit is to be moment-to-moment surren-
dered to His moment-to-moment control in my life.’’ The result, Lotz goes
on in a remarkable, pivotal utterance, ‘‘is that I am increasingly His
look-alike and His act-alike and His live-alike. . . . My body is His dwelling
place, . . . twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.’’61 Thus does the mag-
ical imitative return to the symbiotic arrangement of the early time, to the
period of ‘‘moment-to-moment control’’ by the all-powerful, all-absorbing
parental presence, harbor the potential simply to blur ego-boundaries away
and to leave the worshiper fading off into the mentalistic Big One of the
putative supernatural sphere. When Lotz declares, ‘‘I am increasingly His
look-alike and His act-alike and His live-alike,’’ we recognize immediately
that her autonomous existence as a grown-up increasingly disappears as she
blends herself perceptually and emotionally into the idealized parental Deity
toward Whom she gravitates through her longing to collapse her separate
status in the world. Lotz doesn’t want to be out there on her own. She wants to
be in the Big One or to have the Big One in her (it amounts to the same thing).
She wants to ‘‘surrender,’’ as she puts it, to His ‘‘moment-to-moment control’’
of her ‘‘life.’’ It is as if Lotz is saying just beneath the surface of her homeopathic
conduct, Rescue me, Jesus, from the burden of my biological being, from the
burden of my separation, my smallness, my mortality. Take me inside You as
Your special child. I can’t make it on my own.
The question arises, as individuals such as Blackaby, and King, and
Stafford, and Lotz, and presumably millions of other Christians go about
their business in a ‘‘moment-to-moment relationship of dependency’’ with
Jesus Who, for every second of the day and night, is in ‘‘control’’ of their lives,
what are they actually doing? How does the Lord’s ‘‘control’’ express itself ?
Is the believer reflecting his ‘‘dependency’’ when, for instance, he checks the
air pressure in his tires, or pays the utility bill, or opens his umbrella in the
rain, or passes the salt at the dinner table? When Blackaby and King offer
us examples of those who let God run the show by mentioning, on the one
hand, Biblical figures such as Moses and Joshua and, on the other hand,
dedicated ministers serving their congregations, we understand at once
(pp. 206, 208). But what about the vast majority of ‘‘ordinary’’ Christian
people who are simply attending to their mundane affairs? How do they fit
in? How do they manifest Christ’s ‘‘moment-to-moment control’’? A valuable
hint resides in Darcey Steinke’s review of Heather King’s autobiographical
volume, Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles toward God.62
A hard-drinking Los Angeles lawyer given to casual love affairs, King
toughs it out for 20 years until one fine day, she discovers herself filled to
the brim with disappointment and disgust. Embarking upon her ‘‘spiritual
journey,’’ she visits numerous places of worship but nothing clicks until she
attends a noonday Mass at St. Basil’s Catholic Church and is, all of a sudden,
‘‘stopped cold.’’ With the light shining ‘‘like honey’’ on the ‘‘teakwood pews,’’
she gazes up at Jesus and feels everything within her striving to ‘‘move toward
Him.’’ King writes, ‘‘I saw that like us, He was in pain and He wasn’t sure
why, whether it would ever end, or what it was for. I saw He’d come to
address the deepest mystery of humankind—the mystery of suffering’’
(p. R2). In one sense her journey is completed, and in another sense it is just
beginning.
Jesus becomes the ‘‘core’’ of King’s existence, the ground of her being; she
feels herself transformed, healed, redeemed through the miracle of His Spirit,
body, and blood. Darcey Steinke declares in a crucial sentence of the review
that takes us to the heart of the naturalistic, psychological analysis we are
fashioning here, ‘‘On the outside, her life doesn’t look very different from
anyone else’s, but on the inside King’s flesh ‘faints for Christ’ ’’ (p. R2).
The point is, the ‘‘moment-to-moment relationship of dependency’’ on Jesus,
the ‘‘moment-to-moment control’’ of one’s life through Christ, has very little
to do in the vast majority of cases with anything other than the way the
Christian feels during his ordinary day-to-day activities. In contrast to Moses
leading the Jews out of Egypt, or the dedicated pastor preaching to his flock,
the ordinary Christian actualizes God’s ‘‘control’’ merely by sensing that God
is there, on the inside, as his daily life goes forward. What one ‘‘faints’’ for as
he cleaves unto the Savior is nothing other than the ‘‘inner companion,’’
as theologian Niebuhr expresses it,63 Who is with one or in one benignly,
caringly, lovingly as one checks his tire pressure, or pays his bills, or passes
the salt at dinner. One’s ‘‘dependency’’ is the sense of being held.
To put it somewhat differently, what Christianity offers its followers, and
what King discovers in the Church of St. Basil, is precisely what one had early
on as one luxuriated securely and endlessly within the original symbiotic
union of the early period when the big one was always there, and the little
one functioned morphologically as a kind of organ of the big one, psycho-
logically in the big one’s body and emotions, the big One’s ‘‘flesh.’’ As I’ve
suggested, one cannot explicitly remember that arrangement but one can feel
its life-altering power when it is cued through Christian thought and practice,
as it is cued one magical day for King when she gazes up at her crucified God.
Where else, after all, might her primal, all-conquering religious devotion
come from, where else but from her own actual experience in the world, her
own life history, her own deep ‘‘core’’? King calls her change a ‘‘divine inter-
vention’’ (p. R2) because like all Christians she can’t see the psychological/
neurological processes behind the event. Jesus opens for King the way of
her return to the Beginning, to the early life of security and loving union that
she knew and internalized into her own mind-brain as a little one, as a ‘‘little
child.’’ Indeed, the whole aim of Christianity is to position the believer back
there again so that the believer might, like King, attach herself to the
orthodox Parent-God with an enthusiasm and tenacity sufficient to endure
for the duration of her earthly existence. All who ask as the helpless ‘‘little
children’’ of the Abba shall receive; all who seek as His ‘‘moment-to-
moment dependents’’ shall find. King’s life ‘‘looks just like anyone else’s’’ on
the outside but on the inside she is ‘‘hooked’’ on her companion (she ‘‘faints’’
for Him); on the inside she enjoys a perpetual ‘‘fix’’ of ‘‘spiritual’’ attachment
to an idealized recollection of her own biological being. It is world without
end, companionship without end: the Beginning (Edenic perfection) becomes
the end, and stays the end. The time of separation and searching is over.
Is there regression in all this? Of course there is. Without regression, and lots
of it, Christianity doesn’t work. But the regression to which I am referring at

this particular juncture is not regression for regression’s sake, regression that
enables the Christian simply to float around in the delicious recollection of
the early period. It is, rather, regression in the service of the ego, to employ
a famous psychological phrase; it is regression designed to sooth life’s
wounded traveler, to restore the broken heart and the broken spirit, to address
in short, the current difficulties that confront the believer as he goes about his
day-to-day affairs. When King cleaves unto Jesus she feels better than she did
before she found Him. Her drinking and her sleeping around come to an
end. Her newly discovered faith has a positive adaptational effect upon her.
But more of that particular topic in subsequent sections.
Surely the reader will appreciate, now, the psychological significance of the
metaphors through which the New Testament expresses its contention that
the individual who chooses to pursue his or her existence without depending
upon Jesus every step of the way ‘‘can do nothing.’’ Here are the relevant lines
uttered by the Savior Himself:
Abide in me, as I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide
in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches; He that abideth in me, and I in him, the
same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
If a man abideth not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and
men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
(John 15:4–6)
Thus does Jesus offer Himself to his followers, to the members of his flock, to
His newly baptized ‘‘little children’’ as a kind of psychic umbilicus, the origina-
tive root not only of their spiritual fecundity but of their very lives (‘‘I am the
way, the truth, and the life’’ [John 14:6]): those who fail to ‘‘abide in’’ Him, to
attach themselves to Him as the branch attaches itself to the vine, shall wither
up and disappear forever. The newly born ‘‘child’’ of baptismal rite shall
become a dead child, a lifeless heap of ashes, dust to dust. Again and again
in this brief passage Jesus stresses what we have chosen to term the core mag-
ical wish of the Christian religion as a whole, namely, the wish to be in the
Big One and to have the Big One in oneself, as expressed most vividly in
the Eucharist. ‘‘Abide in me,’’ declares Jesus; ‘‘I am the vine . . . ; he that abid-
eth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without
me ye can do nothing’’ (my emphasis)—nothing, that is, except wither up
and perish, as the dependent infant does in the absence of his indispensible
nourishment. Christianity derives its persuasive power from the natural root
of the worshiper’s biological existence, as that existence extends itself through
implicit recollection into the now of the individual’s ‘‘spiritual’’ seeking. Is it

any wonder after all that the Church routinely presents itself to the devotee
as explicitly his ‘‘mother,’’ and the See of Peter as the ‘‘womb and the root’’
of his faith?64 ‘‘He who does not have the Church as Mother cannot have
God as Father.’’65 Such language goes straight to the heart of Christianity’s
homeopathic magical procedures. The worshiper must be mnemonically
infantilized to ensure both his initial commitment and his continued partici-
pation. He must depend upon his Parent-God every second of his life; he
must attach himself to the Big One and stay attached, if he wishes to flourish,
indeed to continue in the world.
Pastor Anderson pins the matter down nicely for us in his volume Who I
Am in Christ (once more, note the in in the title): ‘‘Spiritually, Jesus is the true
vine, the trunk that connects it to the roots. He is the source from which all
growth begins. No vine, no branches. The branches cannot exist without
being grafted to the vine’’ (p. 200). Anderson goes on,
We have to realize that apart from the vine (Christ), we can do nothing. We are
in Christ—we have been grafted in—but if we attempt to operate independent
of Him, we will not bear fruit. We can’t! . . . Our light will not shine unless we
are plugged in to the energy source [attached].
(pp. 200–201)
Anderson then turns to his own exemplary life in an effort to guide the
reader: ‘‘I try to maintain,’’ he writes,
a constant awareness that God is always present in my life. I begin my day and
start every ministry by declaring my dependency upon the Lord. . . . We must
stay plugged in to the source of our life and make it our ambition to live in such
a way as to please Him.
(pp. 201–2)
The ‘‘nutrients’’ of the ‘‘vine,’’ concludes Anderson, ‘‘must go to the grapes’’

(p. 202). Here again is the pivotal notion of the dependent Christian, the
‘‘little child,’’ feeding upon (or from) the body of the nourishing Big One,
indeed going about his daily business umbilically attached to his provisional
Savior without Whom he cannot ‘‘shine’’ or ‘‘bear fruit’’ or even stay alive.
The believer’s homeopathic, magical identity, the alternate self that accompa-
nies him on his biological journey, is based imagistically, emotionally, and
psychologically upon the central feeding arrangement of life’s initial stages.
As for the intimate connection between abiding in Christ and arousing the
Holy Spirit, which is to say, arousing implicit recollection of the early
symbiotic relationship on which the idea of the Holy Spirit is founded in the
first place, the Reverend Billy Graham discloses it for us in an invaluable pas-
sage: ‘‘ ‘Abide in Me,’ ’’ writes Graham, quoting Scripture, and then, ‘‘by that
is meant we are to have the closest, most intimate relationship with Christ,
with nothing coming between us. . . . Also, this tells us that we can only bear
spiritual fruit if we abide in Christ: ‘Apart from Me you can do nothing’ ’’66
Graham proceeds to declare—and here are the decisive words,
We can see, then, how crucial it is to be filled with the Spirit, and we are
being filled as we abide in Christ, the vine. . . . Cut me off from this vine
and I will wither away and become useless. Without the vine the branch can
do nothing. So it is with our lives. As long as I strain and work to produce
the fruit of the Spirit from within myself, I will end up fruitless and frus-
trated. But as I abide in Christ—as I maintain a close, obedient, dependent
relationship with him—the Holy Spirit works in my life, creating in me the
fruit of the Spirit.
(pp. 242–43)
Clearly then, one feels the Holy Spirit working in his life when one feels him-
self in a close, dependent relationship with his provider, his feeder, his nour-
isher, his vine. As in Eucharistic rite, when boundaries blur, when the
separated biological self conjures up the symbiotic, dependent self of the early
period, when one acts all this out imitatively through his inward, emotional
commitment to Christian teachings, one awakens in one’s own mind-brain
the delicious mnemonic residues of one’s original life-or-death attachment
to the biological caregiver and thus luxuriates in the certainty of Christianity’s
supernatural claims. What the worshiper wants desperately (to be in not out,
to have someone there at all times as Inner Companion) but cannot discover
directly or sufficiently through his own natural existence is magically pro-
vided to him through his religious participations. The Christian who seeks
will certainly find because what it is that he is seeking emerges from his own
head when he indulges himself in specific magical behaviors. As God Speaks:
Devotional advises, ‘‘Put your trust in God. Cry out to Him for a lifeline.
He will meet you right where you are, in the moment of your need.’’67
In other words, postulate faithfully the existence of a supernatural, parental
Big One and then cry out to that Big One as a helpless, dependent, supplicat-
ing little one, and you will receive your lifeline, your cord, your umbilical
attachment, the magical connection that makes you feel all right again,
soothed and reassured as you were soothed and reassured over and over again,
thousands of times, when you cried out during your career as a biological
infant and child. Infantilize yourself, in short, and you will discover once again
through your implicit recollection of your own biological past the security
and comfort you passionately crave.
Obedience, Will, and Control

Obedience is another major facet of the Christian’s homeopathic, magical
behavior. Reborn as Christ’s ‘‘little child,’’ substituting Jesus explicitly for
his biological progenitors, praying to Him regularly for assistance as His
needy, helpless follower, ingesting Him on a regular basis so as to accomplish
merger or interfusion (in Christ), relying utterly upon Him at all times
through a ‘‘moment-to-moment relationship of dependency,’’ indeed regard-
ing Him as the Vine, the Root, from which one draws umbilically his very
life, his very being—thus does the Christian forge his alternate self, the mag-
ical other with which he identifies as he goes about his business on the planet.
The chief internal, culturally proffered, and ultimately self-imposed result of
such behavioral infantilization is, as we have seen, the arrival of the mysteri-
ous Holy Spirit, that elusive, airborne entity that turns out to be, quite logi-
cally, the powerful, affective, implicit recollection of the very biological
experiences that are aroused neurologically as the necromantic, infantilizing
practices and beliefs of the religion go forward at the conscious level of the
worshiper’s existence. If one acts like a little child, one is apt to feel like a little
child, which means in this particular mythic, religious framework or context,
to feel oneself attached to and secure in the continuous, inward presence of a
parental caregiver or companion, one’s Abba, one’s Father, the Lord of one’s
‘‘Mother’’ or Church. Can it come as a surprise in the face of all this that
the Father’s ‘‘little children’’ are expected and instructed to be good little girls
and boys 100 percent of the time, always to submit to the will and the control
of the Big One, always, in short, to do exactly as they’re told? Of course not.
Significantly, Jesus lays down the law in the very same passage in which He
declares Himself to be the follower’s vine, the follower’s nourisher, the umbili-
cal source of the follower’s life and being (John 15:3–14). ‘‘As the Father hath
loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my com-
mandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s com-
mandments, and abide in his love.’’ He then ‘‘commands’’ His followers to
‘‘love one another’’: there shall be no divisiveness, no debilitating rivalries
and hatreds among those who comprise His little sect, or cult. Indeed, Jesus
makes it perfectly (and chillingly) clear that He expects His devotees to be
willing to die for each other, just as He is willing to die for them. How often
have we heard such sentiments from charismatic cultic leaders as they draw
their credulous followers and themselves toward mortal danger. Here are
the decisive words: ‘‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you’’
(John 15:13–14, my emphasis). In this way, ‘‘abiding’’ in Christ’s ‘‘love,’’
being ‘‘friends’’ with Christ, being able to depend upon Christ from
‘‘moment-to-moment’’ means obeying Christ at all times, doing ‘‘whatsoever’’
He ‘‘commands’’ or else. The Savior’s friendship, the Savior’s love, the Savior’s
bestowal of life upon His devotees is conditional, not unconditional. Let’s
turn that last sentence around to better see its conditional structure: ‘‘If ye
do whatsoever I command you, ye are my friends’’ (my emphasis). Like all
compelling sectarian/cultic leaders, like all narcissistic personalities in the
grip of their own putative divinity, their own unique grasp of all truth and
all right as they place themselves directly at the center of the universe, the
‘‘good shepherd’’ Jesus (John 10:14) lets His ‘‘sheep’’ know the score: do my
bidding or out you go. You must get along with each other and prove your-
selves willing to die for the cause, or I reject you; I am no longer your ‘‘friend,’’
your ‘‘vine,’’ your source of life and being. The extent to which such condi-
tional commitment enhances the process of infantilization is considerable.
When the godly Big One commands the ‘‘little child’’ to do exactly as He
says or He won’t ‘‘love’’ him anymore, won’t be his ‘‘friend’’ anymore (his
enemy, then?), the Big One awakens in the little one the primal anxiety
of the early period, the anxiety of separation and loss, abandonment and iso-
lation, the sickening prospect of being out there, entirely on one’s own, with-
out the support and affection that comprise the little one’s entire symbiotic
universe. Has not the Christian been baptized, or confirmed, or reborn? Is
He not Christ’s little child, and is Christ not his newly discovered Abba,
replacing explicitly the biological caregiver (Matt. 10:35)? Does he not cry
out routinely to his all-powerful Lord in a petitionary, supplicatory state of
helplessness and submission? Is he not continuously asking in the hope of
continuously receiving? Does he not regularly go into the Big One’s body
and vice versa through Eucharistic rite? Does he not exist, now, in a state of
‘‘moment-to-moment dependency’’ upon his nourishing vine, his Creator,
his Savior, without Whom ‘‘He can do nothing,’’ not even remain existent?
And might all this be taken away, reversed, negated? Might Jesus reject His
‘‘little child’’ if His little child is not ‘‘good,’’ dutiful, controllable, and obedi-
ent? True, Jesus tells His followers in certain places that He will never ‘‘leave’’
them (John 14:18), and the New Testament echoes this promise forcefully
through Paul’s Epistles (Rom. 8:38), but this only deepens the infantilizing
process we’re exploring here.
I mean, by playing it both ways, by ambiguously controlling its devotees,
Christianity exposes its ‘‘little children’’ to something all children experience
at one time or another as they develop from the primal stages of the early
period (years 1–3) toward the subsequent stages of early childhood
(years 3–5), namely, the ‘‘bad object,’’ the ambivalent or dichotomous quality
of the caregiver’s loving ministrations, the two-sided nature of the parent’s
devotion, the big one’s capacity to both succor and threaten the little one
in his or her care. On the one hand, the big one says, I love you and will
always love you; on the other hand, the big one says, be good or you’re out!
Here is the perfect formula for tightening the little one’s anxious grip on his
benefactor. The more the child is threatened with something akin to Jesus’s
words ‘‘If you do whatsoever I command,’’ the more desperately does the little
one cling to the big one’s neck, or thigh. Within the homeopathic, magical
world of Christian behavior, such dichotomous ministration translates quite
straightforwardly into more regression, more implicit mnemonic arousal of
the early time, more affective sensations of dependency, all of which lead,
in turn or cyclically, to more control, more negation of one’s own will, and
more obedience to the purveyors of the specific religious code, the religious
doctrine, the religious outlook as a whole. Indeed, the posture of unquestioning
obedience as it is associated with the centerpiece of love is capable of arousing
the entire magical system of imitative compliance, infantilization in short.
As the little one is apprehensive or even frightened on the inside, so is he
prone to do the bidding of the Savior, to adopt and to stick with his own
sorry self-identification as a helpless, needy dependent who ‘‘can do nothing’’
on his own.
I’m not suggesting for a moment, of course, that such compliant behavior
does not have its positive, rewarding, adaptational aspect. The vast majority
of human beings underwent, and implicitly recall, the basic, primal pleasure
of mama’s continuous, unwavering control, of going about securely in
daddy’s directional care, hand-in-hand with the guiding big one. In fact, such
control, such direction, and the feeling of security they engender are fre-
quently mistaken in maturity for love, with disastrous consequences. Because
the adult commander’s commands are unconsciously linked in the mind of
the subordinate partner to the caregiver’s dominant role during life’s opening
stages, the vulnerable adult gets hopelessly lost in what turns out to be a dan-
gerous, abusive relationship. One strives to behave as a grown-up when one
functions inside as a helpless, dependent child. We recognize an offshoot of
this emotive configuration in Christianity past and present when the follower
of Christ becomes rigid, severe, compulsive, fanatical, even self-punitive in
his obedient devotion to the Redeemer. Do not the history books offer us a
motley crowd of harsh inquisitors, determined self-flagellators, and skeletal
ascetics? Do we not have at least a hint of all this here, in the New Testament,
as Jesus suggests to his devotees that they be willing to die for the cause, just as
He is willing to die for them?
Everywhere in the literature of the Christian religion such infantilizing
emotional patterns play themselves out. Blackaby and King commence
their section titled ‘‘His Will Is Always Best’’ with the assertion (from
I John 4:16) ‘‘God is love.’’68 They follow this immediately with the startling
equivocation, ‘‘this does not say that God loves, though He does love with
perfect, unconditional love’’ (p. 17). Scripture declares, they continue,
making matters worse, that ‘‘God’s very nature is love. God can never func-
tion contrary to His own nature [love]. Never in your life will God express
His will toward you except that it is an expression of perfect love. He can’t!’’
(p. 17). Surely at this point one has the right to ask, what’s going on? God
is love [noun], yet doesn’t necessarily love [love as a verb]. However, God will
never ‘‘express’’ [verb] anything toward you ‘‘except’’ perfect love. But if that
is the case, then He certainly loves [love as verb], does He not? A moment
later, in the next series of sentences, Blackaby and King inform us that God
is prone to direct His ‘‘wrath’’ toward those who don’t ‘‘obey’’ Him, those
who rebel and sin. Still, He loves us so much ‘‘that He gave us His only
begotten Son, and by this we know love’’ (p. 17). Indeed, God’s ‘‘punish-
ments’’ themselves are based on ‘‘love,’’ just as His ‘‘commands’’ are ‘‘for your
good.’’ As the big ones used to tell us when we were little guys and gals, God
‘‘knows what is best for you’’ (pp. 18–19). The upshot is clear: ‘‘If you love
Him,’’ you will obey Him! If you do not obey Him, you do not really love
him (p. 22, my italics for that old cliché of manipulative parenting). You must
‘‘respond to Him in simple, childlike trust,’’ and as you do so ‘‘your life will
be fulfilling. You will never have to sense an emptiness or lack of purpose.
He always fills your life with Himself ’’ [separation overcome through the
inner companion; symbiosis restored] (p. 25). When you declare, ‘‘I have
no will of my own,’’ and view yourself as ‘‘God’s obedient child,’’ you will
‘‘know’’ the ‘‘Holy Spirit’’ is ‘‘speaking to you,’’ is ‘‘touching your heart,’’ is
‘‘leading’’ you to a ‘‘love relationship’’ with the Almighty [implicit recollec-
tion of one’s primal experience as a helpless little one] (p. 173). Can even
the most dubious, resistant reader fail to see what is occurring here? Blackaby
and King’s mixed message, namely, that God ‘‘is’’ perfect, endless, uncondi-
tional ‘‘love’’ yet responds with ‘‘wrath’’ when His followers are disobedient,
recalcitrant, ‘‘bad,’’ echoes precisely Christ’s conditional injunction, ‘‘Ye are
my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command’’ (John 15:14). The Big One is
there, just as he was there early on when the little one navigated the behavioral
challenges of his fresh biological existence, yet the Big One’s presence, love,
support, provision, and ministration may not be there, may no longer be there,
if the little one’s obedience, the little one’s submission and will-lessness, is not
evident at all times. The nourishing ‘‘vine’’ nourishes only when the
‘‘branches’’ manifest their unqualified dependency; or, to express the matter
in the light of Christianity’s homeopathic, imitative core, the religious magic
works only when the worshiper acts out the essential nature of his early,
developmental interactions with the caregiver.
God will never ‘‘leave me,’’ never ‘‘forsake me,’’ asserts Anderson in his vol-
ume Who I Am in Christ.69 Then, adding a crucial rider, a crucial afterthought
to the initial, comforting assertions, Anderson declares, ‘‘As long as I obey God,
I will live in harmony with Him’’ (p. 27). Backing this up with the words
of Jesus Himself, Anderson quotes the New Testament as follows: ‘‘If anyone
loves me, he will obey my teaching’’ (John 14:23). Here we have again the
manipulative, conditional style of parenting, of controlling the ‘‘little children,’’
that we discovered in Blackaby and King a few sentences earlier: Are you
naughty? Are you bad? Are you rebellious and disobedient? Well, that proves
you don’t love me! To make his position perfectly clear, Anderson treats us to
this infantilizing ditty, the sort of rhyme one might put to kindergartners:
Trust and obey,

For there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus,
But to trust and obey.
(p. 27)
Thus, ‘‘obedience’’ becomes the condition upon which the ‘‘little child’s’’ hap-
piness rests. ‘‘I come to You as Your child,’’ cries Anderson in heartfelt suppli-
cation; ‘‘I no longer put any confidence in myself,’’ he pitiably maintains;
‘‘my confidence is in You. . . . I now accept myself as a child of God’’
(p. 29). Employing for us the crucial notion of ‘‘abiding in’’ Jesus (John 15:3)
from which the thesis of this section originally arose, Anderson notes in a pas-
sage titled ‘‘What God Requires’’ that only ‘‘the one who keeps His com-
mandments abides in Him and He in him.’’ Indeed, pronounces Anderson,
‘‘abiding is obedience’’ (p. 209, my emphasis). The conclusion is inescapable:
one’s submission, one’s will-lessness, one’s dependency, one’s obedience to the
Big One means in, means attachment, means holding, means security, and to
turn the coin over, one’s obedience to the Big One prevents separation, pre-
vents loss, prevents betrayal and abandonment, prevents the very problem or
issue or preoccupation with which Anderson opened his discussion, ‘‘Will
God leave Me?’’ (p. 27). We’ve come full circle then: the Christian’s ultimate
concern is separation, being out as opposed to in, in the body of the Big One,
the feeder, the vine, the supernatural umbilicus rooted neurologically in the
worshiper’s implicit mnemonic and emotional structure, hippocampus and

amygdala, which hold at the level of unconscious memory the primal anxiety
and the primal fusion of the early period. Accordingly, the religion’s manipu-
lation of the worshiper through the condition of obedience is not effectuated
for its own sake, for its ‘‘power’’ or ‘‘force,’’ but for the manner in which the
condition recalls the early time, and through such recollection summons
the Holy Spirit, the implicit, affective, feeling-level memory of the parental
tie upon which the little one utterly depended during the course of his
primary years. The whole scheme of vine, branch, abiding, commanding,
and obeying is designed magically to recreate the past, the time of symbiosis
and submission, the time of parental control, and insert it into the present.
The Big One, by which I mean here the leader of the sect or cult, is finally
inextricable from the merger and security one seeks, the sacred in, the divine
entry into the Body of the God, the attachment to the vine, the umbilicus:
‘‘I don’t want to be self-sufficient’’ declares Anderson ever so pitiably again;
I want to ‘‘abide in Christ’’; I want to be his ‘‘child,’’ to ‘‘submit’’ and through
such ‘‘submission’’ to feel the ‘‘Holy Spirit indwelling’’ within me: ‘‘I commit
myself to be obedient to Your will’’ (p. 212).70 Oh, what a friend we have in
Jesus, Anderson notes (p. 33), echoing the famous hymn by that name, to
which I would add, yes indeed, if we mind Him, as a little one minds his
mommy and daddy. Then and only then is He our ‘‘friend.’’ Otherwise, by
His own New Testamental implications, He’s not.
Here’s Rev. Schuller summing things up for us through the words of a spe-
cific parishioner, an active, representative Christian worshiper who attends
Schuller’s famed Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California:
I feel that all the values the Lord has laid down for us are really for our own ben-
efit. And if we think that we want to do something contrary to those values, well,
that’s fine, but we’re only going to be hurting ourselves if we give in. God knows
the future, and He knows why He set down certain rules. I feel that the Lord is
just. Like He says, He’s our Father and He’s looking out for us. So long as I can
remember that God’s rules are only for my good and for my own happiness,
and that He knows better than I do, then they are easy to adhere to.71
Could there be a more striking, transparent instance of a Christian believer

transferring to the Parent-God, the Father, the Abba, or ‘‘daddy’’ precisely
the thoughts and attitudes that characterize her own early, developmental
interactions with the caregiver? According to Schuller, ‘‘Lisa’’ (whose words
he’s just cited) ‘‘knows the secret to happiness’’ (p. 81), which turns out to
be, in our terms, permitting herself to be infantilized in a manner that restores
her to the period of childhood during which her behavior was entirely
controlled by an omnipotent Big One to whose will she completely subordi-

nated herself as a little one. As Lisa acts this out, as she goes about behaving
this way, she births the alternative, magical identity or self through which
Christianity exerts its hold upon its followers, its subscribers, its ‘‘spiritual
seekers,’’ by which I mean those countless millions who relish the sensation
of a soothing, reassuring implicit memory called ‘‘Holy Spirit’’ suffusing their
inner lives.
Presenting the essentials in two ‘‘steps’’ termed ‘‘sanctification’’ and ‘‘sub-
mission,’’ Graham not only makes plain for us the tie between abiding and
obedience, between minding the Big One and existing in the Big One, he also
discloses the causal connection between arousing the implicit memory of
one’s early, dependent years and experiencing the comforting presence of
the putative Holy Spirit. In short, Graham captures for us Christianity’s mag-
ical nature with a few brief sentences as follows: ‘‘The word ‘sanctification’
comes from the Greek word which means to be ‘separate’ or ‘set apart for a
purpose.’ Paul speaks of the believer as having been ‘sanctified by the Holy
Spirit’ (Rom. 15:16). He wrote to the Corinthians saying that they, having
been sanctified, are called to be saints (I Cor. 1:2).’’72 Graham continues,
‘‘We Christians are to be ‘progressively sanctified’ or ‘made righteous’ in
holiness as we daily abide in Christ—and obey His Word. Abiding
and obedience are the keys to a successful Spirit-dominated life’’ (p. 99).
And finally, ‘‘We are as much sanctified [through our obedience] as we are
possessed by the Holy Spirit. It is never a question of how much you and
I have of the Spirit, but how much He has of us’’ (p. 99). Clearly then, we
are ‘‘sanctified’’ or ‘‘abiding in’’ Christ only to the extent that we follow the
rules set down for us by the supernaturals. The magical system is neurologi-
cally grounded and virtually automatic: as we adopt the infantilized posture
of unquestioning obedience to the Parent-God, we apprehend the implicit,
feeling recollection of our primal bonding with the biological caregiver.
The putative Holy Spirit ‘‘has us’’ in His addictive control.
The ‘‘second step in being filled by the Holy Spirit,’’ declares Graham, ‘‘is
what we might term submission. What do I mean by this? By submission I mean
that we renounce our own way and seek above all else to submit to Christ as
Lord and be ruled by Him in every area of our lives’’ (p. 140). And then,
the essence of sin is self-will—placing ourselves at the center of our lives instead
of Christ. The way to be filled—controlled and dominated—by the Spirit is to
place Christ at the center of our lives, instead of self. This only happens as we
submit to Him—as we allow Him to become Lord of our lives.
(p. 140)
Graham insists that ‘‘nothing is excluded. We can hold nothing back. . . . He

must control and dominate us in the whole and the part. . . . This surrender is
a definite and conscious act on our part in obedience to the Word of God, . . .
a complete and final act of submission’’ (pp. 143–44). Here again is the essence
of the homeopathic magical system: we choose to follow after a self-styled
cultic/sectarian Leader (‘‘Follow me,’’ says Jesus to the ‘‘fishers,’’ and they ‘‘fol-
low’’ [Matt. 4:19]); we become the Big One’s ‘‘little children,’’ dependent upon
Him from ‘‘moment-to-moment’’ for security and love; we reject our self-
determination, our self-sufficiency; we participate in patently magical actions
such as the Eucharist and prayer; we entirely give over to the Leader the direc-
tion, the control of our lives, and presto chango we possess an alternate identity,
an alternate self upon which we can rely amid the stern, unchanging realities of
our separate, limited, mortal condition on the planet. Once again within the
protective cocoon of the Big One, once again in as opposed to out, merged as
opposed to separated, special as opposed to ordinary (we are now ‘‘saints’’),
and finally, immune to the harrowing awareness of biological mortality, we
cleave unto our ‘‘Shepherd’’ in a sheep-like trance state, leaving everything ulti-
mately up to Him (more of this particular metaphor in the next major section).
The psychological weirdness of the Christian religion, its strange, cultic, eerie
nature, derives overwhelmingly from this two-sided magical arrangement.
On the one hand, Christians walk about as grown-up men and women, partici-
pating straightforwardly in their society, their culture, just like everyone else.
On the other hand, they walk about immersed in a fog of regressive behaviors
and beliefs, thoroughly infantilized even to the extent of turning their volition,
their self-determination, their very perception and comprehension of the uni-
verse in which they exist over to an invisible, tripartite parental presence who
leads them doctrinally around as helpless dependents. Because they can’t see
directly the implicit biological memories that validate emotionally the claims,
the perspectives, of the creed, because the neuropsychological underpinnings
of ‘‘faith’’ lie obscured in the realm we now usually call the unconscious, Chris-
tian worshipers are readily drawn into the welcoming Body of Jesus, into the
Church and its many soothing infantilizations, not to mention, of course, the
normative social interactions that enrich the congregant’s day-to-day involve-
ment in his environmental surroundings.
A major facet of the submission, the will-lessness, toward which Graham
urges his readers resides in the sexual sphere and highlights the importance
of abstinence. In a section titled ‘‘The Battle with the Flesh,’’ Graham quotes
St. Paul as follows: ‘‘For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another’’ [Gal. 5:17]
(p. 103). He then declares,
This indicates what the real conflict is in the heart of every true believer. The
flesh wants one thing and the Spirit wants another. The black dog and the white
dog are often fighting. As long as there is not the surrender of mind and body
every moment of the day, the old nature will assert itself.
(p. 103)
Graham spells out what he has in mind explicitly when he refers to ‘‘any kind
of impurity in thought or deed, . . . lust, . . . modern films, pornographic liter-
ature, . . . wantonness or debauchery, . . . lewdness and sensuality of any kind’’
(p. 106). He sums things up with, ‘‘By faith we turn over our lives totally and
completely and without reservation to the Holy Spirit’’ (p. 113). This is,
of course, a well-flogged, inescapable, even notorious theme in Chris-
tianity past and present, as witnessed most famously perhaps by Friedrich
Nietzsche’s lively tract The Antichrist in which the author pens what he calls
the ‘‘eternal indictment of Christianity’’ as ‘‘against life itself,’’ as ‘‘contemptuous’’
of ‘‘the body . . . through the concept of sin.’’73 Nietzsche asks in his best
rhetorical style,
Really, how can one put a book in the hands of children and women which
contains the dictum: ‘‘to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife,
and let every woman have her own husband. . . . It is better to marry than to
burn.’’? And how can one be a Christian as long as the notion of the immaculate
conception Christianizes, that is, dirties, the origin of man?
(pp. 642–43)
However, what we recognize at this stage of our discussion through specifically

Graham’s use of Paul’s words, ‘‘the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh,’’ is that Christianity’s condemnation of sensuality ema-
nates not from its hatred of ‘‘life’’ and the ‘‘body’’ but from its intuitive recogni-
tion that sexual behavior interferes with the process of infantilization upon which
the entire magical edifice of the religion as a whole is reared.
As we have seen, it is the implicit recollection of the early period, the
period of prepubescence, that is connected inextricably to the emergence of
the putative Holy Spirit, and it is, in turn, the emergence of the Holy Spirit
within the worshiper that convinces him of the creed’s validity. If and only
if potential believers are transformed through the teachings of Jesus from
ordinary men and women into helpless, dependent, obedient ‘‘little children’’
(Matt. 18:3) will the Holy Spirit work its miraculous, salvational change, a
change that cannot occur while ordinary men and women are acting out their
sexual impulses. Indeed, human sexuality (outside of its dutiful, procreative
presence in marriage) is anomalous to the infantilizing process. How can
Christianity produce the ‘‘little children’’ it requires when its prospective con-
verts or struggling practitioners are carried away by their aroused and eager
sexual organs? People who are mating or thumbing through pornographic
magazines are hardly the helpless babies Christianity needs to fill its ranks
of will-less, obedient worshipers. When Nietzsche writes elsewhere that the
‘‘priest’’ leads ‘‘humanity by the nose’’ through the concept of ‘‘morality’’
(p. 621), he fails to take us to the heart of the matter: it is not ‘‘morality’’ in
some sexual sense that Christianity ultimately advocates; it is obedience,
will-lessness, submission, control; it is these precisely that reside at the foun-
dation from which the notion of ‘‘morality’’ arises. Accordingly, Christianity
does not condemn ‘‘life’’ or the ‘‘body.’’ It condemns grown-up ‘‘life,’’
grown-up biology, grown-up participation in the world. It lovingly promul-
gates infantile life, infantile biology, infantile participation in the world because
in the process of infantilization it discovers not merely the power to control
but the potential to gratify its followers who will rest fully content only in
the Savior, only in the regressive, symbiotic merger with the Big One, only
in the magical, homeopathic return to the period in which being separate,
being out there on one’s own, has not yet occurred. As in every sphere of
human conduct with which it concerns itself, Christianity’s aim in respect
to sexuality is to play it both ways, to deal over here with the ordinary,
grown-up men and women it requires in its worldly ranks in order to gain
fresh followers from each generation, and over there with the regressed, needy
‘‘little children’’ it strives to produce through its infantilizing doctrines
and rites, its postulation of an explicitly parental Deity upon Whom its
submissive, obedient devotees must entirely depend.
From the perspective of the last few paragraphs, including the brief discus-
sion of Nietzsche’s famous treatise, we begin to spy the underlying quality of
what we might think of as the Devout Christian Practitioner, the dedicated
Christian soul who has rendered himself or herself up to the Church’s teach-
ings, to the Way of the Savior, to the religious essence of the inspirational
creed. And what we behold in our mind’s eye as we picture this, as we recall
perhaps the sweet, compassionate face of the Christian expositor on televi-
sion, the softly smiling mouth, the concerned, gentle eyes, the exalted, sooth-
ing message of mercy and forgiveness and love, is not a hater of life and the
body, a despiser of the world and the flesh, but an infantilized human being
who has fallen under the spell of a cultic, magical system of thought and con-
duct dedicated to the notion that all men and women are created as the ‘‘little
children’’ of an omnipotent, infallible, invisible Parent-God, a Big One Who
commands that His devotees exist submissively as little ones for all their days
on earth and for all their eternities in heaven. We have in the Devout
Christian Practitioner what Rev. Anderson captures for us perfectly when he

cries out in his devotional handbook over and over again, ‘‘I no longer put
any confidence in myself; my confidence is in You’’ (p. 29);74 ‘‘I come to
You as Your child’’ (p. 51); ‘‘I commit my body to God as a living sacrifice’’
(p. 51); ‘‘I belong to You’’ (p. 59); ‘‘I was incomplete without You’’
(p. 100); ‘‘I renounce my self-sufficiency’’ (p. 154); ‘‘I declare my dependency
upon You’’ (p. 204); ‘‘apart from You, I can do nothing’’ (p. 204); ‘‘I don’t
want to be self-sufficient’’ (p. 212); ‘‘I was given weakness, that I might feel
the need for God’’ (p. 244). From such material emerges the quintessential
Christian, the infantilized one, the dependent one, the pitiable one, or per-
haps as we used to say in the 1970s and 1980s when we employed psycho-
logical thinking informally in our thoughts and in our everyday interactions
with others, the castrated one eagerly pursuing his path toward ‘‘sainthood’’
(I Cor. 1:2), toward the inward, salvational condition he may confidently
expect as Jesus’s obedient disciple, as one who attaches himself firmly to the
umbilical Vine from which comes not only his nourishment, but his very
existence itself.
To what may we naturalistically attribute this remarkable expression of our
basic human nature? I’ve been suggesting that from this book’s inception: the
powerful, persistent anxiety engendered neurologically in a neotenous animal
born into an extended period (ages 1–6) of biological helplessness and
dependency, and eventually (adolescence onward) into a profound, inescap-
able awareness of its own inevitable demise and disappearance from the world
(dust to dust). Such dependency and such awareness of death (both of which
trigger the elemental fear of separation) have been with us for millennia and
were thoroughly established within the human psyche by the time a Galilean
faith healer named Jesus began regarding himself out loud as the long-
awaited Biblical Messiah and wandering as such about the land of Israel.
Love: Neurological Catalyst of the Holy Spirit

That Christianity ties God’s love to obedience in one place doesn’t mean it
can’t allow love to stand alone, as unconditional, as absolutely certain, as the
unqualified expression of the Deity’s active, fundamental nature, in another
place. Indeed, Christianity feels perfectly comfortable saying one thing over
here when that one thing serves an immediate purpose, and another thing
over there when circumstances change. What is essential for Christianity in
one era may not be essential in another. The religion as a whole, historically,
geographically, and intraculturally is wholeheartedly in sympathy with Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s famous definition of consistency as the hobgoblin of little
minds. As long as a particular theological doctrine or perspective (religious

dualism, for example) does not attack the very pith of the creed and thus
threaten destruction of the overall theological message, it may well have,
one day, an opportunity to fly.
Love is the sine qua non of human infancy and childhood. Without it, nor-
mal development is at risk. It isn’t enough that babies and children are fed
and clothed and bathed and changed. They must be lovingly held and
stroked and cooed and smooched, over and over again, without end, for
happiness to take root. And the street is, of course, two-way: from the parent
the baby gets his full-blown life, his existence as a person, his joie de vivre;
and from the baby the parent gets precious, gratifying maturation toward
sexual and interpersonal fulfillment. We’re talking here about the very core
of human experience, at least when humans come together as biological
progenitors of the species to which they belong. To read the New Testament
or the literature of Christianity, to watch Christian television or the ardent
preacher at work in the meetinghouse on Sunday, makes it obvious that
love is also the sine qua non of the Christian religion. Christians are told
continuously that Jesus loves them, and this is in itself sufficient to awaken
the Holy Spirit within. Through baptism, which produces little Christian
children; through prayer, which thrives on helpless, dependent followers
who believe that merely to cry out is to receive; through the Eucharist in which
Christians reenter the body of their creator; through obedience wherein
Christians discover the umbilical Vine on which they feed and flourish;
through this infantilizing context as a whole, to hear of God’s infinite, uncon-
ditional, salvational, and personal love for each and every one of His individ-
ual offspring is more than enough to arouse the implicit recollection of one’s
own personal, loving bond with the biological caregiver and thus produce for
the Christian worshiper the unchallengeable inward perception of a loving,
protecting, providing parental presence, the mysterious, sanctifying spirit of
the beneficent Father and His tender Son. As the old Beatles’ tune has it,
‘‘all you need is love.’’ No matter how wounded, disappointed, defeated,
disheartened, or lonely the condition in which one discovers himself on his
worldly journey, this may do the trick. Can we not see, now, why Christianity
insists the Holy Spirit is a person? For the theological assertion of God’s
all-encompassing love to work fully, that love itself must be tied intellectually
and emotionally to an actual human being, not simply to Jesus as the parental
substitute (Matt. 10:35–38), but to the biological caregivers themselves, to
the ones who were actually there as people, as bodies, and who are still there
as people, as bodies in the implicit mnemonic foundations of one’s affective,
emotional life.
‘‘It wasn’t an argument that saved me,’’ declares Mark Chironna on the
Trinity Broadcasting Network as he recounts his voyage from sin to salvation;
it was ‘‘the love of a Savior Who would never let me go.’’75 How many times
has one heard something exactly like this enunciated on the radio or the tele-
vision set, or expressed in a devotional handbook or pamphlet? Nor does the
love of God have only to be received, recorded, and accepted as there, to work
its homeopathic magic. The affective, memorial system operates equally well
when the worshiper’s devotion is openly affirmed, when the worshiper says to
his Parent-God as he said over and over again through his sounds and words
and gestures to his biological mommy and daddy as a little one, ‘‘I love you.’’
This is, of course, why Christians are encouraged to tell the Big One of their
love, to lavish that love upon Him, to preserve, in short, the emotional foun-
dation of their own biological lives so that it may serve as the magical founda-
tion of their putative ‘‘spiritual’’ lives. To actualize our love for God, states
Stafford, we must express it openly, all the time. We must say to the Lord,
‘‘Father, I don’t know what this means or where it will lead, but I have to
tell you I love you.’’76 When we do this, ‘‘when that step is taken,’’ claims
Stafford, ‘‘something happens.’’ We hear ‘‘the sound of the door closing
behind us. We are in this relationship now. There is no way to back out. . . .
The courtship is over. We belong to him’’ (pp. 45–46). It is the ‘‘Holy Spirit,’’
the ‘‘Person,’’ declares Stafford, Who
plants this seed of love in us. By Him we cry ‘‘Abba, Father.’’ The Spirit himself
testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children (Romans 8:15–16). There is
nothing irrational about calling out to God as ‘‘Daddy’’: we are like small
children before God. But only the spirit enables us to love Him for it.
(p. 45)
In this way, in this magical way rooted neurologically in our implicit memo-
rial structure, ‘‘we go in and are never expected to back out. Why would we?
Inside, we find love and joy. In Christ, through the Holy Spirit, we live in
love’’ (p. 54). Surely the gist of our theoretic, psychological position in this
book as a whole is pellucid at precisely this juncture: the aim of the Christian
religion is to find one’s way back in, to be in again, not out, to be safe and
secure inside the body of the loving Big One, not out there in that anxious,
scary world of separation, smallness, and death. There is no need to cavil over
the exact ordering of the implicit mnemonic processes that trigger the magi-
cal goings-on in their entirety, the forging of the alternative, homeopathic
identity of ‘‘little one’’ that exists alongside one’s ordinary biological nature.
To hear of God’s love may be enough to awaken the Person of the Holy Spirit;
or the implicit recollection of the early period as it is aroused by a variety of
ritualistic and doctrinal cues such as baptism, prayer, the Eucharist, or specific
key images discoverable in Scripture (the umbilical vine, for example) may be
sufficient to prompt the avowal of the believer’s ‘‘love of God,’’ an avowal that
will reinforce through a kind of neurological chain reaction the unconscious
affective memory of the loving biological exchanges that stand directly
behind the fashioning of the Holy Spirit itself as an integral aspect of the
tripartite Godhead. ‘‘God, who is altogether person, expects and demands
that avowal of love,’’ writes Stafford, and then, ‘‘He also gives us vows of
His own’’ (p. 54). The Holy Spirit exists and functions at both ends of this
dynamic, mnemonic continuum.
‘‘We cannot do anything to qualify for unconditional and voluntary love,’’
asserts Anderson in his volume Who I Am in Christ; ‘‘we labor under the false
assumption that if we live perfectly everybody will accept us, while there was
One who lived His life perfectly, and everybody rejected Him.’’77 Anderson
goes on to declare,
I know who I am now. I’m a child of God, and the basis of my acceptance is in
Him, not in man. . . . Understanding and receiving God’s unconditional love is
foundational for all future growth. We don’t have to do things so God will
someday accept us. We are accepted by God completely as we are.
(pp. 21–22)
And then, relying on the terminology that calls to mind explicitly the early
stages of our human existence from which the magical potential of all this
directly springs, Anderson states,
When you know who you are in Christ, you no longer need to be threatened by
people or compete with them, because you are already secure and loved. . . .
Like babies, we are newborn in Christ, and we are to long for the pure milk
of the Word. . . . Let me encourage you as a newborn babe in Christ to long
for the pure milk of the Word.
(p. 23)
Anderson concludes his devotional treatise with this prayer to the Almighty:
‘‘I love You with all my heart, soul and strength. You are the Lord of the
universe, and the Lord of my life, now and forever.’’ For the reader he has,
‘‘Can you be content with His will in any situation? Yes, because He is there
with you, and you are in Him’’ (pp. 276–77). Surely the reader, with that,
will be inclined to breathe, Amen.
Through this rich, lush imagery of loving parental care and infantile feed-
ing and bonding we are taken once again to the heart of Christian magic, to
the way in which the religion’s supernatural edifice reawakens the strong,
originative time when the devoted biological caregiver was there for the help-
less, dependent little one, when the newcomer’s very survival hinged directly
upon remaining in orbit, in the gravitational field of the primary provider.
‘‘There, there,’’ says Anderson’s book in effect to its readers, to the ‘‘newborn
babes’’ taking in the ‘‘milk’’ of Jesus’s Word, ‘‘everything is going to be all
right. Don’t fret. You’re not out there anymore. You’re back in, back again in
the arms of the Big One who loves you unconditionally and will never let
you go.’’ Can we not appreciate from this perspective the full psychological
significance of the following definition of ‘‘Heaven’’ in that ever-popular
paperback volume Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul: ‘‘Heaven is a great
big hug that lasts forever’’?78 Here is Christianity in nine simple words that
boil down straightforwardly to the alternate, magical reality in which Chris-
tians choose to position themselves as they cleave unto the word: perfect
loving security upon the bosom of the Parent-God, the Abba-Daddy and the
tender Son who want nothing more than to love their little ones to pieces,
personally and forever. How could the vast, mysterious, surrounding world
possibly appear more benign than this to a vulnerable primate whose limita-
tions and mortality are always resounding in his mature, symbol-making mind?
What is the Christian’s ‘‘secret to happiness,’’ asks Rev. Schuller who chooses
to answer through one of his parishioners (Lisa) whose following words he
considers to be ‘‘psychologically and theologically sound’’:
[Happiness comes] from knowing that I am loved no matter what, and that I
don’t have to perform and I don’t have to be a good person. I don’t even have
to follow the Lord’s laws to be loved. It’s just total grace and it’s all mercy. It’s
knowing that I’m loved just because He created me. So if I blow it, I blow it,
but Jesus is still standing here with open arms. And if I do good He’s standing
there to commend me. When you know you’re totally accepted for who you
are, it’s a lot easier to be yourself with others. If they accept me, that’s great,
but if they don’t that’s okay too, because then I’ll just run home to Daddy—to
Jesus, to my Heavenly Father.79
Could there be a more vivid, striking exemplification of implicit memorial

materials from life’s opening stages drifting into the mnemonic operations
of the grown-up such that the total, unconditional, loving acceptance of the
little one by the Big One may be transferred unconsciously to the ‘‘Daddy’’
of the putative supernatural realm, a realm that is cognitively and emotionally
fabricated ab initio for the express purpose of providing the vulnerable, mor-
tal human creature with an alternate identity, an alternate world in which he
may enjoy the limitless perfections of the symbiotic stage of development
during the course of which his existence transpired within the organic, emo-
tional field of ministering other? Listen again to the key phrases: ‘‘I’m loved
just because he created me.’’ There is only one natural, empiric precedent
for that sentiment. ‘‘I’ll just run home to Daddy—to Jesus, to my Heavenly
Father.’’ Surely the reader can see the early, developmental period from which
those words derive. ‘‘I’m loved no matter what.’’ Here is the positive, inner
conviction harbored by people whose parents did a reasonably decent job
during the formative years. As for the employment of the image of ‘‘home’’
specifically, its widespread usage in the literature of Christianity warrants
further consideration.
Saxophonist Ron Brown joins Pat Robertson on the 700 Club in
May 2006 to recount for the television audience both his descent into the
snake pit of drug addiction and his ascent into the refuge of faith. From mari-
juana to cocaine to heroin, Ron becomes hopelessly addicted until one day, in
the midst of suicidal ruminations, a ‘‘miracle’’ occurs. Somewhere in his tor-
mented mind Ron begins to hear the voice of his Savior, Jesus Christ, saying
to him again and again, ‘‘You are my child. Come home to me.’’ This is the
turning point. Rendering his life up to the Lord, Ron ‘‘goes home’’ at last.
After listening intently to Ron’s story, Pat turns to his viewers with the words,
‘‘This is the journey home for which each of us was created.’’80 A year or so
later, in August 2007, Robertson is once again ministering to his television
audience. As he approaches the conclusion of his inspirational message he
maintains with a concerned yet tender expression and with a firm yet sooth-
ing voice that the Gospel’s ultimate message is not ‘‘avoid sin,’’ or ‘‘follow
the rules,’’ or ‘‘prepare for heaven,’’ but simply this: ‘‘come home.’’81
Let’s keep firmly in mind as we go that Jesus’s devotees do not ‘‘come home’’
in just any old way, anymore than they pray in just any old way. The French
philosopher Gaston Bachelard notes that ‘‘all really inhabited space bears the
essence of the notion of home,’’82 to which I would immediately add that every
notion of home bears the essence of the notion of mother, father, parent, or
some combination thereof. Coming home for the Christian is operationally
intertwined with the Christian having become God’s ‘‘little child,’’ newly born
through baptismal rite, attached to the umbilical ‘‘Vine,’’ feeding on the body
and blood of the Redeemer, taking in the ‘‘milk’’ of the ‘‘Word,’’ existing in a
state of ‘‘moment-to-moment dependency’’ on the Big One, praying regularly
as the needy offspring of the omnipotent Deity, obediently performing ‘‘what-
soever’’ the Big One ‘‘commands’’ for the filial Christian’s ‘‘own good,’’ and
looking forward to the endless, loving ‘‘hug’’ that is commensurate with Chris-
tianity’s death-denying notion of ‘‘heaven,’’ eternal union with the original
Parent-Creator.83 As Lisa puts it in Schuller’s psychologically and theologically
‘‘sound’’ presentation of the creed, no matter what happens to the Christian

during the course of his earthly days, he always has the option of ‘‘running
home to Daddy’’ (p. 83), just as Rev. Robertson declares that he should. In this
way, the entire journey ‘‘home’’ transpires in a doctrinal, ritualistic context of
infantilization through which the worshiper is psychologically, mnemonically,
and emotionally restored to the opening stages of his existence, the stages dur-
ing which the ministering caregiver is always, somehow, there. What else would
we expect? Surely a religion that devotes itself to reentering the parental body,
to going back in, must lead finally to the place (or Bachelard’s ‘‘space’’) where
all the infantile, childish behaviors were acted out on the naturalistic, biological
level and internalized memorially to become the basis of the religious magic
and hence of the Holy Spirit’s personification, the Holy Spirit’s ‘‘reality’’ in
the mind and body of the religious seeker, namely home. If, as God Speaks:
Devotional informs us, the Parent-God’s message to His ‘‘children’’ is, ‘‘I love
you. I love you. I love you,’’84 then surely that love will be connected inextri-
cably to the notion of ‘‘home,’’ to the actual place in which such ‘‘love’’ was
expressed between real people to lay the foundations of Christian necromancy
and thus rear up the ‘‘supernatural,’’ ‘‘spiritual’’ enclosure wherein Christians
indulge their timeless longing for eternal union with an ever-faithful, loving
Provider. When Robertson breathes out the word ‘‘home,’’ he discloses for us
the immediate, conscious goal of Christianity because this word precisely will
trigger, or cue, the whole mnemonic context of retrieval upon which, as I’ve
just stated, the edifice of religious magic is constructed, and, in particular, the
idea of the person of the Holy Spirit. The way this goes in the New Testament
and in the related Christian literature is psychologically arresting, or, dare I say,
revelational.
When Jesus is informed in one place (Matt. 12:47–50) that His mother
and brothers are nearby and wish to speak with Him, He replies as follows:
‘‘Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?’’ He then ‘‘stretche[s] forth
his hand toward his disciples’’ and says, ‘‘Behold my mother and my breth-
ren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same
is my brother, and sister, and mother.’’ Here are Stafford’s interpretative com-
ments on the passage: ‘‘A person’s family is the context he has come from: the
father and mother who bore him, his brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles,
and cousins.’’ With ‘‘Jesus,’’ Stafford goes on,
this is reversed: he is the context out of which his family must spring. . . .
‘‘Pointing to his disciples, he said, Here are my mother and my brother’’
(Matt. 12:49). Paul, following this example, called Christians the adopted chil-
dren of God. He also called the church the ‘‘body of Christ.’’ In the church we
find the down-to-earth focus of Jesus’ personality. Jesus is invisible to us, but
through his family [his body/church] he makes himself known.85
Stafford declares that ‘‘those who quickly become participants in Jesus’ family
grow in faith’’ and live
active, fruitful lives. The reason for this vitality is obvious, if we think about
faith as a personal relationship to Jesus. His flesh and blood carry more of his
personality than a set of bloodless ideas. If we know Jesus’ family, we are not
far from knowing Jesus as a person.
(p. 83)
Accordingly, when we are in Jesus’s ‘‘family’’ we are in Jesus’s ‘‘church,’’

and when we are in Jesus’s church we are in Jesus’s ‘‘body,’’ in His ‘‘flesh
and blood’’ as His ‘‘flesh and blood,’’ the terms people use diurnally to
describe their biological kin. ‘‘We will feel his life flowing to us [the umbilical
Vine] through his own body,’’ concludes Stafford (p. 88). The psychological
implications are transparent.
God’s message of love, for Christians, is linked integrally to home and to
family, both of which are linked in turn to Jesus’s body, to His ‘‘flesh’’ and
His ‘‘blood,’’ which are also His ‘‘church,’’ His followers, His ‘‘mother,’’ and
His ‘‘brethren.’’ To ‘‘come home,’’ as Robertson advises us to do in keeping
with Christianity’s ultimate wisdom, is to come into the ‘‘body of Jesus,’’ into
His ‘‘flesh’’ and His ‘‘blood,’’ His ‘‘Person’’ as He is manifested in His sacred
‘‘church.’’ The whole religion at its magical foundations is thus rooted in our
biological foundations, our families, our parental bodies, the flesh and blood
we actually knew and internalized into the neurological ground of our
memorial makeup that is implicitly awakened again and again through doc-
trine and through rite to lend emotional support, indeed emotional convic-
tion to the supernatural claims of the creed. The putative ‘‘Holy Spirit,’’ as
I’ve suggested from the outset, is neither more nor less than our feeling recol-
lection of those actual people who were lovingly, caringly there when, as help-
less little ones, we needed them to stay alive. When Jesus makes the
connection between His mother and His family and His church, He allows
us to do so, too. And when Paul makes the connection between Jesus’s church
and Jesus’s body, he shrewdly invites us into that body (through the Eucharist,
for example) and into the originative symbiosis it recalls. ‘‘Salvation comes
from God alone,’’ asserts the Catechism of the Catholic Church; ‘‘but because
we receive the life of faith through the Church, she is our mother. ‘We believe
the Church as the mother of our new birth.’ ’’86 And again, this time with
explicit reference to adults undergoing baptismal rite and becoming thereby
Jesus’s ‘‘little children’’: ‘‘ ‘With love and solicitude mother Church already
embraces them as her own’ ’’ (p. 319). Thomas Wolfe maintained in his
famous novelistic title that You Can’t Go Home Again; and when he did so,
he meant really, not magically. Within the realm of Christian magic you can
leave home and not leave home, you can say goodbye to ‘‘daddy’’ and then
run home to ‘‘daddy,’’ you can separate from the matrix and not separate
from the matrix, all at the same time as time holds both the present and
the past. That indeed is Christianity, through the stirrings of the Spirit: into
the body of Christ through the wound in His side; into His body forever to
stay as His ‘‘little child’’ of love. Such is the inward shape of what we’ve
chosen to call here infantilization.
Were we obligated to suggest the most compelling link in the overall mag-
ical setup, it would have to be, from the neurobiological angle at least, the
link between love and the reversal of separation—by which I mean the sepa-
ration of the child from the parent and the final separation of the individual
from the world and everyone in it through death. No facet of human exis-
tence drives the magic of Christianity more relentlessly than separation in
both of these fundamental senses. Indeed, the religion as a whole must be
regarded as a mythic veiling and finally a denying of separation’s role in our
lives. Into the loving body of Christ means into the permanent shelter, into
the permanent security, of symbiotic interfusion with the immortal, parental
Big One. Faithful, bona fide Christians, then, are allowed to play it both
ways: they put the invisible Deity in the parent’s place and thus move away
from biological union with its threats of incestuous dependency; at the same
time, as they gravitate toward the Deity, they become ‘‘little children’’ again;
they find the early period again; they gratify their thirst for infantile depen-
dency again, feeding on the body, the Vine, of the umbilical Provider.
Psychologically, Christians are like crabs, moving forward and backward all
at the same time. Let’s sample a vivid, characteristic instance of mythological
veiling and comprehensive denial.87
In ‘‘Becoming One of God’s Children,’’ The Watchtower notes ‘‘how family
members rejoice when they find one another after being separated and lost!
The Bible describes how humans were tragically separated from God’s family.
It also tells how they are now joyfully united.’’88 Here’s the specific ‘‘story’’ that
veils the biological realities and sets the stage for wholesale supernatural denial:
When God’s first human son, Adam, rebelled, . . . the human race was painfully
separated from its loving Father and Creator [the developmental separation of
the child from the parent, internalized implicitly into the memorial system during
years 1–4]. This is because through his rebellion, Adam forfeited for himself and
his yet unborn offspring the privilege of being children of God. Through his
servant Moses, God described the consequences of what had happened: ‘‘They
have acted ruinously on their own part; they are not God’s children, the defect
is their own.’’ The defect, or sinful nature, alienated humans from God, who is
holy and perfect in every way. In a sense, then, mankind became lost, father-
less.—Ephesians 2:12. [‘‘In a sense, then’’ marks the struggle of the myth maker
to turn the story toward our own biological development: ‘‘lost, fatherless,’’ etc.]
(p. 8)
The Watchtower goes on,
To emphasize the extent, of mankind’s isolation, the Bible refers to those out-
side God’s family as ‘‘enemies.’’ (Romans 5:8, 10) Separated from God, human-
kind has suffered under the harsh rule of Satan and the deadly effects of
inherited sin and imperfection [death as a biological reality of human exis-
tence]. Can sinful humans become part of God’s family [enter the unconscious
longing for resumption of primal symbiotic interaction with a parental pres-
ence]? Can imperfect creatures [separate and anxious] become children
of God in the fullest sense, the way Adam and Eve were before they sinned?
[In other words, can the biological facts of human existence be reversed
so as to create a world free of primal anxiety, primal terror, the brute animal
detection of separation, smallness or vulnerability, and death?]
(p. 9)
The Watchtower forges ahead this way in a section titled perfectly for our
purposes ‘‘Gathering Separated Children’’; note the tie between love and
separation’s magical defeat:
Lovingly, God made provisions for the benefit of imperfect people who love
him. (I Corinthians 2:9) The apostle Paul explains: ‘‘God was by means of
Christ reconciling a world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses,’’
(2 Corinthians 5:19) God provides Jesus Christ as a ransom for our sins.
(Matt. 20:28) With appreciation, the apostle John wrote: ‘‘See what sort of love
the Father has given us, so that we should be called children of God.’’
(I John 3:1) Thus, a way was opened for obedient mankind to become part of
God’s family once again. . . . All who respond to God’s love will be progressively
restored to the perfection of life that Adam lost [union with the Creator, the
perfect symbiosis of the early time, or the Garden]. Even the dead will be raised
[the denial of death]. Thus God will fulfill his promise.
(p. 9)
When we are told in The Watchtower’s companion pamphlet, Awake, that

such ‘‘good news, . . . preached to all the nations (Matt. 24:14) . . . strikes a
responsive chord in honesthearted individuals’’ and ‘‘instills conviction,’’89

we think to ourselves, ‘‘you bet it does!’’ For the ‘‘responsive chord’’ that
‘‘instills conviction’’ is none other than the putative Holy Spirit, the implicit
memorial recognition of the biological experiences upon which the mytho-
logical material is ultimately constructed. To express it another way, as the
Christian or potential Christian begins to perceive the ‘‘good news,’’ as he
begins to feel it awakening the early period of loving symbiosis with the big
one, he maps the original caregiving arrangement onto the supernatural tale
and thereby experiences its ‘‘truthful’’ nature. Recognizing neurologically
the foundational pattern on which his own biological existence is based, he
doesn’t hold back; he goes with it. In precisely this way is the believer or the
convert an ‘‘honesthearted individual’’ who ‘‘wants to worship God’’ in accor-
dance with the gospel of John (10:4, 27). His search for replacement, his
‘‘want’’ in short, is coming to an end.
Again and again the New Testament breaks the ‘‘good news.’’ Again and
again Jesus assures the ‘‘lost sheep’’ of ‘‘Israel’’ that He will always be there
for them as their good shepherd and guide (Matt. 10:6). ‘‘I am with you
always,’’ He declares, ‘‘even unto the end of the world’’ (Matt. 28:20). ‘‘I will
not leave you comfortless; I will come to you’’ (John 14:18). ‘‘I will never
leave thee, nor forsake thee’’ (Heb. 13:5). In what is perhaps the New Testa-
ment’s most intense, most passionate passage, the utterance that underscores
once and for all Christianity’s supreme promise, supreme commitment, first
as a fledgling sect or cult and subsequently as a full-fledged religion, Paul
writes in his Epistle to the Romans,
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
(Rom. 8:38–39)
Nothing, then, absolutely nothing, including the realities of the biological

world (death above all), the powers of the societal sphere, and the figments
of the supernatural domain, will interrupt or cancel the parent-child bond
between the loving Father, the ministering Abba, and the ‘‘little children’’
who have entered into his sacred body through the intercessions of Jesus
Christ, the merciful Redeemer. Separation as life’s bugbear is simply erased
from the universe, and as it is erased, Christianity’s chief psychological pur-
pose for each and every individual who gravitates toward its emotional blan-
dishments is accomplished. All Christians are in, not out. Indeed, for
Christians there is no out. The faithful worshiper is forevermore the Deity’s
special, immortal darling, resting his head on the bosom of the Big One Who
is eternally present, eternally there.
As we would expect, everywhere in the literature of Christianity this grati-
fying, transformational ‘‘news’’ is proclaimed. ‘‘We will never be cast away by
our heavenly Father,’’ declares Anderson. ‘‘He has promised to never leave us
or forsake us. Let me encourage you as a newborn babe in Christ to long for
the pure milk of the Word’’ (p. 23). ‘‘It is thrilling to note,’’ writes Graham,
that Jesus says believers will not be left alone. Through the Holy Spirit whom
He and the Father sent, He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5). He will
remain with every believer right to the end. This thought has encouraged me a
thousand times in these dark days when satanic forces are at work in so many
parts of the world.90
Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, presents her heartfelt comments on

this theme as follows:
There have been times in my spiritual journey when my feelings have crowded
out any awareness of God’s presence in my life. I have felt abandoned by Him.
At such times of weakness I have needed a clear vision of Jesus—a vision that
He has given me through His Word, which distinctly promises, ‘‘Never will
I leave you; never will I forsake you.’’
And what does Jesus say to Lotz when He is ‘‘there,’’ when he is ‘‘present’’
once again ‘‘in her heart’’? It goes like this: ‘‘ ‘I love you.’ ’’91 The faithful
Christian, asserts theologian Niebuhr,
trusts in the loyalty of the Transcendent One and in His power, being certain in
his mind that nothing can separate men from the love of God. He trusts God
for himself, for his nation, for mankind. This trust is wholly personal. He has
the assurance that God will never forsake him, that God seeks and saves the
lost.92
Thus are we back again through Christ to the ‘‘lost sheep’’ of ‘‘Israel.’’
Surely the reader can discern in the foregoing citations Christianity’s magical
system of thought and the central role of separation therein. Everything is at
hand. The worshiper becomes the Parent-God’s ‘‘newborn babe’’ (Anderson),
and as he does so, he gravitates mnemonically toward the early period of his life
and the implicit, feeling recollection of the big ones who ‘‘encouraged’’ him in
the beginning (Graham’s ‘‘Holy Spirit’’); he feels their loving presence as they
whisper ‘‘I love you’’ to him (Lotz); and he feels their reliability, their trustwor-
thiness, and the inward assurance that they will never ‘‘forsake’’ him, let him go
(Niebuhr)—precipitate separation, in short. Mapping this pattern of care onto

his current, separate condition in the world (biological autonomy accomplished
with concomitant awareness of death), creating an idealized, flawless version of
parental ministration and devotion personally for himself through the Parent-
God of the putative supernatural sphere, the worshiper magically resolves the
‘‘dark, satanic’’ imperfections of his mortal existence: He is now in the body
of the Lord, loved, protected, sheltered, and secured forevermore, world
without end. As Niebuhr renders it in the theological language of the creed,
‘‘Christ is the personal companion who has been engrafted into my personal
existence so that I cannot and do not live except in this companionship. . . .
He does not let me go’’ (pp. 104–5).
******
Let’s move on, now, to the second part of this central chapter. There, I’ll
strive to expand my neuropsychological analyses into what I hope will
become a fruitful evolutionary view of the manner in which Christianity
works in the mind and in the body. Where the behavior of human beings is
concerned, the neuropsychological and the evolutional proceed inseparably,
and it’s time we started putting them together.
Notes
1. Joseph Ratzinger, ed., Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liquori, MO: Liquori
Publications, 1994), p. 312.
2. Robert H. Schuller, The Be (Happy) Attitudes (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1985),
pp. 115, 227.
3. Neil T. Anderson, Who I Am in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1984), p. 9.
4. Tim Stafford, Knowing the Face of God (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress,
1986), p. 50.
5. Throughout this book, as stated in the notes to Chapter 1, I’m using the King
James Version of the Bible.
6. See note 5 above.
7. G. P. Fisher, A History of Christian Doctrine (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1978), p. 348.
8. Ratzinger, ed., Catechism of the Catholic Church, pp. 330–31.
10. Friedrich Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
11. Ibid., p. 123.
12. Romano Guardini, Prayer in Practice, trans. L. Loewenstein-Wertheim
(London: Burns and Oates, 1957), p. 209.
13. Ole Hallesby, Prayer, trans. C. Carlsen (Leicester, England: Intervarsity Press,
1979), p. 24.
14. C. H. Spurgeon, quoted in Richard S. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True
Home (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 179.
15. Patrick Cotter, How to Pray (Boca Raton, FL: Globe Communications,
1999), p. 13.
16. James Pruitt, Healed by Prayer (New York: Avon Books, 2000), p. 1.
17. Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), p. 622.
18. Timothy Jones, The Art of Prayer: A Simple Guide (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1997), p. 108.
19. Huldrych Zwingli, quoted in Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and
Psychology of Religion, p. 271.
20. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, p. 622.
21. Hallesby, Prayer, p. 22.
22. Guardini, Prayer in Practice, p. 63.
23. Gordon Lindsay, Prayer That Moves Mountains (Dallas: Christ for the Nations,
1996), p. 37.
24. Joshua David Stone, Soul Psychology (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999),
p. 168.
25. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 179.
26. Cotter, How to Pray, p. 14.
27. Jones, The Art of Prayer, p. 110.
28. Larry Dossey, Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine
(San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), pp. 100–101.
29. Stephen Winward, Teach Yourself to Pray (London: English Universities Press,
1961), p. 46.
30. George Arthur Buttrick, So We Believe, So We Pray (New York: Abingdon-
Cokesbury, 1994), p. 30.
31. See Tony Castle, ed., The New Book of Christian Prayers (New York: Crossroad,
1986), p. 61.
32. Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 75.
33. Cited in Leonard Roy Frank, ed., Quotationary (New York: Random House,
1998), p. 636.
34. Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought
Known (London: Free Association Books, 1987), pp. 13, 33.
35. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Library of
America, [1902] 1987), p. 69.
36. Bollas, The Shadow of the Object, p. 33.
37. Terry Lynn Taylor, The Alchemy of Prayer (Tiburon, CA: H. J. Kramer, Inc.,
1996), p. 15.
38. Bollas, The Shadow of the Object, pp. 14–15.
39. The terms Holy Ghost and Holy Spirit were interchangeable among
Christians until the inception of the twentieth century when Ghost was dropped
because of its associations with magic and the paranormal.
40. It is worth noting here that Billy Graham considers the personhood of the
Holy Spirit to be a mysterious and ‘‘terribly difficult subject.’’ See Billy Graham,
The Holy Spirit (New York: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1978), p. 10.
42. Ratzinger, ed., Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 334.
43. Stafford, Knowing the Face of God, p. 94.
44. Cited in Fisher, A History of Christian Doctrine, p. 321.
45. Perhaps one day in the not-so-distant future scientific experiment will allow us
to see the memorial regions of the brain light up when Christians are suffused with
the putative Holy Spirit by virtue of their participation in Christian thought and
practice.
46. See John 16:7 for the Holy Spirit as ‘‘the Comforter.’’
47. Fisher, A History of Christian Doctrine, p. 406. Interestingly, on p. 409, Fisher
suggests that the modern scientific view of matter as energy may eventually obviate
the controversy over the nature of the bread and the wine. If the bread and the wine
are Christ, then His energy is in them; if they represent Christ, then they may, as
energy, still hold Him. Energy, in this way of thinking, is very close to spirit.
48. For the Church as Christ’s body, see Graham, The Holy Spirit, p. 73.
The ‘‘body of Christ,’’ holds Graham, ‘‘is the Church.’’ See also I Cor. 6:15 and
12:11–12.
49. Gerhard O. Forde, Where God Meets Man: Luther’s Down-to-Earth Approach to
the Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972), p. 87.
50. H. Richard Niebuhr, Faith on Earth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1989), p. 104.
52. Louise Kendall and R. T. Kendall, eds., Great Christian Prayers (London: Hod-
der and Stoughton, 2000).
53. See Ratzinger, ed., Catechism of the Catholic Church, pp. 355, 516.
54. Maurice Wiles, ‘‘What Christians Believe,’’ in The Oxford Illustrated History of
Christianity, ed. John Mc Manners (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990),
pp. 553–71. My citation is on p. 570.
56. Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King, Experiencing God (Nashville, TN:
Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1998), pp. 25, 30.
57. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, God Will Make a Way (Nashville, TN:
Integrity Publishers, 2002), p. 98.
58. Schuller, Be (Happy) Attitudes, p. 17.
59. Anderson, Who I Am in Christ, p. 9.
61. Anne Graham Lotz, I Saw the Lord (Grand Rapids, MI: Zodervan, 2006),
pp. 90–97.
62. Darcey Steinke, ‘‘Divine Intervention.’’ Los Angeles Times Book Review,
February 24, 2008, p. R2.
63. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, p. 104.
64. See Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought (New York: Harper and Row,
1968), pp. 100–101.
65. Ibid., p. 101.
66. Graham, The Holy Spirit, p. 242.
67. N.A., God Speaks: Devotional (Tulsa, OK: Honor Books, 2007), p. 87.
68. Blackaby and King, Experiencing God, p. 17.
69. Anderson, Who I Am In Christ, p. 27.
70. Houston Smith writes, ‘‘It is obedience to the will of the Father that is the
‘food of Jesus,’ and it is obedience which is to be characteristic of his Body, his Bride,
which is the Church.’’ See Houston Smith, The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the
Great Tradition (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2005), p. 133.
73. Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘‘The Antichrist,’’ in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. and ed.
Walter Kaufman (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), pp. 656, 642.
75. The Gospel Hour, Trinity Broadcasting Network, September 6, 2006, 7:00
p.m., Channel 40, Orange County, California.
78. Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health
Communications, Inc. 1997), p. 294.
80. The 700 Club, Christian Broadcasting Network, May 9, 2006, 9:00 a.m.,
Channel 40, Orange County, California.
81. ———, Christian Broadcasting Network, August 7, 2007, 9:00 a.m.,
82. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 5.
83. Christianity has through the ages offered us many versions of heaven, of
course. Yet heaven as one’s eternal home with a loving Parent-God at the center is
certainly chief among them. See Colleen Mc Dannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven:
A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 14–37.
87. My initial allusions to the mythological aspect of Christianity occur earlier in
this chapter, during my discussion of the Eucharist.
88. N.A., The Watchtower (New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society,
March 1, 2008), Vol. 129, No. 5, p. 8.
89. N.A., Awake (New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, March 1, 2008),
Vol. 89, No. 3, pp. 8–9.
91. Lotz, I Saw the Lord, pp. 88–90.
92. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, pp. 94–95.
CHAPTER
PART TWO
3
Tracking the Parent-God:
The Pastoral Metaphor
Edward O. Wilson provides us with the broad evolutionary framework we

require when he characterizes religion (and thus Christianity) as ‘‘an environ-
mental tracking device.’’1 Let’s pay close attention to his way of working
up to that. Believe me, it’s worth it if our goal is to understand Christianity
right down to its biological roots. ‘‘Social behavior, like all other forms of
biological response,’’ writes Wilson (p. 74)
is a set of devices for tracking changes in the environment. No organism is ever

perfectly adapted. Nearly all the relevant parameters of its environment shift
constantly. Some of the changes are periodic and predictable, such as the
light-dark cycles and the seasons. But most are episodic and capricious, includ-
ing fluctuations in the number of food items, nest sites and predators, random
alterations of temperature and rainfall within seasons, and others. The organism
must track these parts of its environment with some precision, yet it can never
hope to respond correctly to every one of the multifactoral twists and turns—
only to come close enough to survive for a little while and to reproduce as well
as most.
Organisms solve the problem, Wilson goes on,
with an immensely complex, multi-level tracking system. At the cellular level,

perturbations are damped and homeostasis maintained by biochemical reac-
tions that commonly take place in less than a second. . . . Higher organismic
tracking devices, including social behaviors, require anywhere from a fraction
of a second to a generation or slightly more for completion.
It is among humans, Wilson contends, that we discover the ‘‘highest grade’’

of ‘‘adaptational, organismic response’’ to the environment, namely, ‘‘the
generalized learner’’ (pp. 74, 77).
In a series of key conceptual utterances that we’ll have in mind from this
point forward, Wilson observes,
The organism has a brain large enough to carry a wide range of memories, some
of which possess only a low probability of ever proving useful. Insight learning
may be performed, yielding the capacity to generalize from one pattern to
another and to juxtapose patterns in ways that are adaptively useful. . . . The
process of socialization in this highest grade of organisms is prolonged and
complex. Its details vary greatly among individuals. The key social feature of
the grade, which is represented by man, the chimpanzee, baboons, macaques,
and perhaps some other Old World primates, is a perception of history.
The organism’s knowledge is not limited to particular individuals and places
with attractive or aversive associations. It also remembers relationships and
incidents through time, and it can engineer improvements in its social status
by relatively sophisticated choices of threat, conciliation, and alliances. It seems
to be able to project mentally into the future, and in a few, extreme cases
deliberate deception is practiced.
(p. 77)
What evolves, then, ‘‘is the directedness of learning—the relative ease with
which certain associations are made and acts are learned, and others bypassed
even in the face of a strong reinforcement’’ (p. 79). In this way (and I will
italicize the words that are absolutely vital to our purpose), ‘‘culture, includ-
ing the more resplendent manifestations of ritual and religion, can be inter-
preted as a hierarchical system of environmental tracking devices. . . . To the
extent that the specific details of culture are not genetic, they can be decoupled
from the biological system and arrayed beside it as an auxiliary system’’ (p. 284).
Here, then, is the overall perspective that enables us to integrate the neuro-
psychological and evolutionary approaches to Christianity’s magical enact-
ments, and in so doing, to deepen and enrich the contextual observations
that have carried us to this juncture.
To understand Christianity as both ‘‘social behavior’’ and ‘‘biological
response,’’ we must include the first society in which and through which all
human beings discover themselves as people ‘‘in the beginning’’ (Gen. 1:1),
namely, the society of neonate and caregiver. For several crucial years (1–5)
the infant and small child track the parent, and the parent tracks the infant
and small child in an adaptive, life-sustaining mutuality (or symbiosis) upon
which the survival of both individual and species entirely depends.
Tracking the Parent-God: The Pastoral Metaphor 141
Homeostasis for the newly born human animal is inextricably bound up with
this environmental tracking system that is memorialized into the emerging
mind-brain and recalled implicitly, and to a lesser extent explicitly, for the
duration of that animal’s existence on the planet. At one level of environmen-
tal tracking, homeostasis is maintained by parental reaction that commonly
takes place (I will echo Wilson as closely as I can) in a few seconds (response
to the child’s pain or hunger); other organismic tracking behaviors involving
bodily training and what we think of as ‘‘manners’’ (adaptive integration into
the familial unit and wider communal group) require anywhere from days to
weeks to months to years for completion. The directedness of this internalized
learning is clear. The little one cries out, calls, mouths his primal syntactic
speech (mama, come), or otherwise indicates through bodily movement and
gesture his biological, emotional urge to gratify his needs, and the big one
responds accordingly, thus fulfilling her or his role in the tracking arrange-
ment. To employ the Christian terminology, associated primarily with the
act of supplication as we’ve seen, the little one asks and the big one sees to it
that he receives (Luke 11:9–10).
As the little one develops mnemonically through such directional learning,
he remembers not merely individuals and places with attractive or aversive
associations; he remembers relationships through time, and this yields the
capacity to generalize from one pattern of relationship (mama/daddy) to
another pattern of relationship (the God who watches over him [tracks
him]/mother church)—in short, to juxtapose patterns in modes that are adap-
tively useful. He comes to Christianity with a perception of history, with
the contextual knowledge of his first salvational experience in the hands (quite
literally) of his transformational (‘‘magical’’), loving, omnipotent provider
who comprised for many crucial years his principal environment, his world.
Thus, he comes to Christianity with the concomitant ability to project into
the future, to use his past experience in his efforts to deal with the world in
which he discovers himself. Because these manifold, two-way (child/parent),
biological adaptations are not strictly genetical, they can be decoupled from
the biological system and arrayed beside it as an auxiliary system for tracking
the environment, the magical system of Christianity, for example, which is
designed explicitly to cope with problems that resemble, indeed that inevi-
tably call to mind and to body, the problems with which the little one coped
‘‘in the beginning.’’ Was he small and vulnerable in the beginning? Well, he
still is as he confronts the unpredictable, overwhelming forces of nature and
culture that surround him: accident, illness, injustice, enemies, floods, earth-
quakes, droughts, and starvation. Was he afraid of separation in the beginning?
Was he anxious about finding himself alone? Well, he still is (especially in our
anomic, modern social order) as he copes with the cessation of parental care,
with ‘‘growing up,’’ with the sheer physical and emotional recognition that he
is, in fact, alone, or ‘‘on his own’’ in the world around him. Was he instinctu-
ally, organically afraid of cessation, of death? Of course he was, like all creatures
great and small. Well, he still is, and afraid not only instinctually but con-
sciously, perceptually, and existentially. As a ‘‘grown-up’’ he must confront
cessation not only in his body but in his mind, his imagination; he must
contemplate his end (dust to dust), and in such contemplation (‘‘Alas, poor
Yorick!’’) he must confront the primal terror that all human beings confront
through their symbol-making capacity, through their ‘‘higher consciousness.’’
It hardly needs to be added, of course, that all of this taken together, smallness,
separation, and death, holds the potential to engender considerable anxiety, not
to say genuine emotive malaise, in the normal, everyday human creature as he
goes about his business on the planet. So what does the creature do?
Predictably, adaptively, and to a certain degree shrewdly, he falls back on
what worked. Tracking the parental big one worked early on, so let’s juxtapose
patterns, decouple the strictly biological from the purely inventive, and do
the same thing all over again in our predicament, when we find ourselves cop-
ing with dangers and discomforts during a later stage of our development.
Let’s become ‘‘little children’’ again; let’s follow a Big One again (lead us
not into temptation), depend on a Big One, ask of a Big One, feed on a
Big One (Jesus as umbilical Vine), go into a Big One (the Eucharist), and
thus, precisely thus, we’ll find ourselves ‘‘delivered’’ again. We’ll feel attached,
secure, empowered, and last but certainly not least, immortal (O death,
where is thy sting?). In other words, we’ll escape our primal fears, our primal
anxieties, and by so doing we’ll function better, more adaptively, more home-
ostatically, as we deal with the challenges, the demands, the sorrows, and the
pleasures that greet us along the way. Through the magical system of Chris-
tianity we’ll fashion another, alternative identity (a version of the original
one we experienced), and place it alongside the problematical, biological
one with which our development has saddled us. We’ll become two people,
one in the natural, physical, ‘‘fallen’’ world of smallness, separation, and mor-
tality, and the other in the ‘‘spiritual’’ domain of eternal bonding, eternal
security, eternal innocence, first as the creational Garden is restored to us
(the new Adam) and subsequently as Heaven opens its magnificent, pearly
portals. No matter that our infancy and early childhood were imperfect,
had their flaws, even perhaps their miseries. They were, in the last analysis,
‘‘good enough’’ (Winnicott, p. 12). They worked, and that’s all we need.
We can idealize and refashion as much as we wish, now; we can luxuriate fully
in contemplation of a perfect, flawless, loving Parental-Presence who is there,
always and forever there, with no exceptions whatsoever (I am with you

always, even unto the end of the world). We’re on track again.
Finally, as we track the Big One, as we discover His salvational presence in
our lives and being, something deep inside (implicit mnemonic retrieval of the
original, unitary, biological tracking system) tells us directly, intimately, and
feelingly that He is actually there, actually present in our hearts, and in every-
thing that exists (the ‘‘Holy Spirit,’’ an integral facet of the doctrinal Godhead).
To return once again to our theoretical position as described in the opening
paragraphs of this section, we have here what evolutionist Gerald M. Edelman
would call a ‘‘teleonomic system,’’ or a ‘‘prediction of the past.’’2 Edelman writes,
‘‘Brains are selective recognition systems,’’ and ‘‘recognition’’ is ‘‘a kind of adap-
tive matching of animals to their environments. . . . We are driven by a recate-
gorical memory under the influence of dynamic changes of value.’’ Memory,
‘‘the key element in consciousness,’’ allows us to achieve meaning through
‘‘reentry,’’ through mapping previous experience onto the present in a manner
that leads us to adaptive, or selective, behavior. Accordingly, Edelman goes on,
Evolution can select animals in such a way that they have general goals, purposes,
and values. . . . The past experience of natural selection adjusts the set points of
value systems . . . that are adaptive for survival. In our case, the brain of a con-
scious human being, serving as a somatic selective system, uses value constraints
to project the future in terms of categories [parent/child] and goals [security].
In reference to religion specifically, Edelman remarks, ‘‘Of course . . . we must

admit the possibility of an almost total denial of biological values on the
part of those organisms we call martyrs and saints. Only creatures endowed
with higher-order consciousness can so transcend the dictates of biology.’’3
The ultimate adaptive aim of Christianity’s magical system of behavior, then,
is to deny the very ‘‘dictates of biology’’ that trigger its ‘‘Creation’’ in the first
place. The ultimate reality of the infantilized Christian is a spirit that confirms
the existence of a supernatural Parent-God.
We come now to a watershed: at the metaphorical heart of the Judeo-
Christian tradition in general and the Christian religion in particular is an
‘‘environmental tracking device,’’ or tracking system, in which a helpless,
dependent little one (the sheep) tracks an all-powerful, provisional Big One
(the shepherd) Who in turn watches over, or keeps an eye on, His charge,
His creation, His child. Because the metaphor is designed to capture the ideal
essence of the human being’s relationship with the Almighty, and because that
relationship is rendered in terms of absolute dependency, absolute trust, abso-
lute submission, and sustainment, the pastoral configuration of care as a
whole creates in the worshiper a striking memorial echo of his own biological
development, an echo from which emanates, for Christians, that mysterious,

validating, comforting entity known officially as the ‘‘Holy Spirit.’’
‘‘Follow me,’’ says Jesus to his first disciples, Andrew and Peter, as He discovers
them ‘‘casting a net into the sea’’ (Matt. 4–19, my emphasis).4 ‘‘And they
straightway left their nets, and followed him.’’ (I italicize the words that com-
mence the theme of tracking.) ‘‘And going on from thence, he saw two other
brethren,’’ James and John, ‘‘And they immediately left the ship and their father,
and followed him’’ (Matt. 4:22). Eventually, as Jesus’s ‘‘fame’’ (Matt. 4:24) begins
to spread in earnest, ‘‘there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee,
and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem . . . ’’ (Matt. 4:25). When Jesus per-
ceives fully these ‘‘multitudes’’ approaching Him for guidance and succor, He
is ‘‘moved with compassion on them’’ because (here the pastoral metaphor
explicitly commences) ‘‘they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having
no shepherd’’ (Matt. 9:36). Instructing His disciples to go about the land with
His sacred, salvational message, Jesus declares, ‘‘go . . . to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand’’
(Matt. 10:6–7). Let us note carefully that it is here, in the 10th chapter of
Matthew and in precisely this emergent metaphorical context of following or
tracking, of lost sheep, and of the shepherd who guides the flock, that Jesus
announces to His disciples His intention of ‘‘set[ting] a man at variance against
his father, and the daughter against her mother’’ (Matt. 10:35). Indeed, says
Christ, ‘‘he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me;
and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he
that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me’’
(Matt. 10:37). Clearly, Jesus in the guise of the ministering shepherd is bent
upon taking the place of the parent in the worshiper’s life; and if the worshiper
is a parent already, then his or her ‘‘love’’ must be directed most powerfully, most
passionately, toward his or her salvational guide as opposed to the natural off-
spring of the biological family. The devotees of God’s Son and Heir will follow
after Him, will track Him and only Him, and if they themselves are tracked by
their mortal offspring, then they must subordinate such tracking to their loving
affiliation with the Redeemer. The only tracking acceptable to Jesus is tracking
after Him. He is the Shepherd, and everyone else without exception is sheep.
It is to the Pharisees that Jesus crystallizes through the pastoral metaphor
the nature of His sacred purpose in the world, His intention for mankind,
and His relationship with the Father in heaven. As He goes about His
explanatory business, Jesus makes plain for us the evolutional, adaptive
significance of the Christian religion, the way it works in the minds and
bodies of those who become followers. It is no matter that the parable of
the ‘‘sheepfold’’ falls on hostile, deaf ears where the Pharisees are concerned
(they want to stone Him when He’s finished). Our analytical ears, and eyes,
are wide open, and we are grateful for the information.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the
sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his
own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.
And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the
sheep follow him: for they know his voice.
And a stranger they will not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not
the voice of strangers.
(John 10:1–5)
Working to refine His meaning for those who attend, Jesus continues,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.
All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not
hear them.
I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in
and out, and find pasture.
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come
that they may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
(John 7–11)
Finally, declares Christ,
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall
any man pluck them out of my hand.
I and my Father are one.

(John 27–30)
Here, within the pastoral metaphor through which Christ delivers his pivotal
explanation of what becomes doctrinally the Christian religion itself, is the early
period of our biological lives, down to a tee: the helpless little ones are
ensconced in their special place, their nook, their gated room; vulnerable, at
risk, ultimately within reach of the world’s ‘‘evil,’’ its dangers, its corruptions,
its thievery and murder; dependent entirely on the big one who watches over
them, protects them, feeds them (in ‘‘pasture’’), ensures that they have and will
continue to have the ‘‘life’’ they naturally crave. Just as the infant is instinctively
attracted to the parent’s ‘‘voice’’ (and ‘‘face’’ as we shall see very soon), so the lit-
tle ones in the ‘‘sheepfold’’ know the ‘‘voice’’ of their provider and ‘‘follow’’ after
it (track it) when they hear it. Not only do they balk at following after strangers;
they ‘‘flee’’ from them when they hear their unfamiliar voices, just as human
infants and small children anxiously shy away from those to whom they are
not instinctually and/or socially connected. And, of course, the shepherd
‘‘names’’ his sheep and ‘‘calls them out by name,’’ makes them his individual
charges, members of his personal, pastoral family with whom he goes forward
‘‘hand in hand’’ (John 10:29). The ‘‘environmental tracking device’’ on which
Wilson concentrated earlier from his evolutionary perspective is captured per-
fectly, finally, when Jesus declares that He will not only protect and provide
for His charges but will ensure them ‘‘life more abundantly,’’ which is to say,
see to it that they receive from the ‘‘environment’’ everything they require to
flourish. To render the issue from a homeostatic angle, to track after Jesus is
to get all one needs, just as the infant/child gets all he needs by following after
the biological provider (the human animal’s original tracking device).
Let’s bear in mind that the ‘‘sheep’’ of Christ’s ‘‘parable’’ are explicitly His
‘‘little children’’ (Matt. 18:3), made so, or soon to be made so, through
baptismal rite, through spiritual ‘‘rebirth.’’ Indeed, only as Christ’s ‘‘little
children’’ can the followers or trackers find their way to the eternal ‘‘pasture’’
of ‘‘salvation,’’ or the ‘‘kingdom of heaven’’ that is now ‘‘at hand.’’ Too, the
‘‘sheep’’ have established themselves as ‘‘worthy’’ followers of Jesus by
‘‘loving’’ Him ‘‘more’’ than they love their natural, biological parents
(Matt. 10:37), by putting Him in the parent’s place. Jesus, the Shepherd after
Whom the sheep track, has become explicitly a parental presence. At the end
of His ‘‘parable,’’ Christ firmly declares, ‘‘I and my Father are one’’
(John 10:30), which is to say, Jesus is now to be identified equally with the
‘‘Father’’ as the creator of the flock, as the divine progenitor of the followers,
the trackers who look to Him for their existence, their lives, and well-being.
And like all good parents who love their children overwhelmingly, uncondi-
tionally, Jesus affirms His willingness to die for His offspring, for His ‘‘little
ones,’’ for those who follow dependently after Him when He calls them forth
by name from their shady nook—a wishful, idealized echo of the biological
provider whose devotion to his little guy or gal is total, limitless, and com-
plete. As for the ‘‘biological dictate’’ of mortality, the one dire earthy given
that no one gets around, even that Christ Jesus defeats, or as Edelman would
say, denies. To track Him is to live forever, to know the ‘‘pasture’’ forever, to
experience what might be termed ‘‘eternal adaptation’’ or ‘‘eternal homeosta-
sis.’’ The collapse of organic integrity, the blunt fact of biological decay and
extinction (Yorick’s skull) is ultimately canceled as Christianity restores the
worshiper through the infantilization process to the period of biological life
that obtained before one became conscious of separation from the matrix,
before one gained awareness of his eventual biologic disappearance from the
world. The magical ‘‘shepherd’’ transforms his ‘‘sheep,’’ his grown-up fol-
lowers, into perfectly secure ‘‘little children,’’ offspring as they were ‘‘in the
beginning,’’ in Eden, in the Garden days of flawless, timeless symbiotic
merger with the Big One. Thus we see in the parable of the ‘‘sheepfold’’ the
overall aim of the Christian religion, or how it works in the mind and the body.
Christ’s worshipers, Christ’s devotees, Christ’s trackers are returned through
implicit recollection to the primal stage during which eternal union and eternal
life were emotively or affectively real: death and separation did not yet concep-
tually exist. In this way, the actual biological program (or tracking system) of
the infant and caregiver is decoupled from its biological foundation and
arrayed metaphorically alongside the ‘‘cultural institution’’ or ‘‘religion’’ where
it can awaken mnemonically the original ‘‘pattern’’ and thus restore the primal
adaptation, the primal security, the primal homeostasis upon which each of us
relied as we sought to get under way ‘‘in the beginning.’’ The pastoral meta-
phor, to employ Edelman’s terminology, seeks to fashion through memory ‘‘a
perceptual identity between present and past objects.’’5 As we’ve contended
all along, it is precisely the mnemonic resuscitation of such affect, such feeling,
such emotion that catalyzes the appearance of the wondrous ‘‘Holy Spirit’’ in
the worshiper’s endogenous perceptual field, an appearance that triggers in turn
his heartfelt belief in the veracity of the Christian ‘‘story,’’ its mythologized
version of our origins and destiny that to this very day enchants the countless
millions who seek to reverse, for perfectly understandable reasons, the stern
‘‘dictates’’ of our biological existence.
The centrality and frequency of pastoral metaphors in the Judeo-Christian
tradition is randomly attributed to the ubiquity of pastoral life in the ancient
Near East.6 ‘‘Pastor’’ in the religious sense derives ultimately from ‘‘pastor’’ in
the Biblical sense of ‘‘shepherd.’’ But to let it go at that, to adhere exclusively
to a historical exegesis (as is usually the case), would be arrantly superficial.
The pastoral metaphor is everywhere, and frequently at the center of decisive
doctrinal exposition, because the pastoral situation in and of itself, with con-
troller, caregiver, and guide in charge of helpless, dependent trackers or fol-
lowers, lends unerring metaphorical expression to the inward essence of
Christianity, its psychological/neurological foundations in the early period
of our lives, the period during which the original biological tracking arrange-
ment between caregiver and neonate is implemented for years and internal-
ized deeply into the mind-brain of the potential believer, the worshiper and
follower of the explicitly parental Deity Who watches over his explicit ‘‘little
children.’’ During but one stage of our participation in the natural order of
things did we know perfect or relatively perfect security and perfect or rela-
tively perfect love as we luxuriated in the hands of the ministering big one.
Christianity’s chief aim, from which comes its appeal, is to restore the faithful
to precisely that situation on the supernatural (magical) level and thereby to
remove from their existence on the earth the natural, biological imperfections
that all of us inherit simply by virtue of our having been born. If ‘‘metaphor’’
is ‘‘the currency of the mind,’’ as Edelman maintains in his evolutionary
writings, and if ‘‘memory’’ is ‘‘the key element in consciousness’’ or in what
Edelman calls ‘‘the remembered present,’’7 then the pastoral metaphor as it
is consciously employed in the Judeo-Christian tradition purchases our
admission to the psychological/neurological analysis in which we may behold
the wishful, emotional roots of present-day Christian thought and practice.
Just listen to the commentators as they pin the matter down for us.
‘‘Learning to listen to God’s voice is critical if you and I want to maintain
the fire of our personal revival,’’ writes Anne Graham Lotz.8
Jesus taught that listening to His voice is one of the fundamental principles of
discipleship. He described Himself as the Good Shepherd and you and me as
His sheep when He taught, ‘‘the sheep listen to his [the Shepherd’s] voice. He
calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. . . . His sheep follow Him
because they know his voice.’’
Lotz goes on,
In Western civilization, the concept of a personal shepherd is relatively meaningless.

When an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease was reported in the news a few years
ago, we saw sheep ranches flashed on the news and sheep pens pictured on the front
page of our morning newspaper, making the public aware of a little-noticed but
vital industry. Sheep today graze in carefully fenced-in pastures and are guarded
by specially bred dogs and identified by a number tattooed in their ears.
(p. 140)
And then, in the crucial utterance,
But the eastern shepherd was, and in many parts of the world still is, very
different. He raised his sheep from the time they were lambs and maintained
responsibility for them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year in
and year out, for their entire lifetime. There were no dogs or fences or tattoos.
The Eastern Shepherd of Jesus’s day raised his sheep primarily in the Judean
uplands. The countryside was rocky, hilly, and filled with deep crevices and ra-
vines. Patches of grass were sparse. So the shepherd had to establish a personal,
working relationship with each sheep, developing its love and trust in him in
order to lead it to where the path was smoothest, the pasture was the greenest,
the water was the cleanest, and the nights were the safest. The shepherd always
led the sheep. He knew their names, and when he called them, they recognized
his voice, following him like a swarm of little chicks follow the mother hen.
When he stopped, the sheep huddled closely around him, pressing against his
legs. Their personal relationship with him was based on his voice, which they
knew and trusted.
(p. 141)
‘‘In this parable,’’ concludes Lotz, ‘‘you and I are the sheep, the Good
Shepherd is Jesus, and the voice of the Good Shepherd is the Word of God.
Our Shepherd speaks to us through the written words of our Bible, and His
words are personal’’ (p. 141). The psychological/neurological gist of all this
could hardly be plainer.
The ‘‘Eastern shepherd’’ attends to his sheep in a manner that strikingly
recalls the manner in which human parents attend to their own little ‘‘lambs,’’
maintaining their parental responsibility ‘‘twenty-four hours a day,’’ establish-
ing a climate of ‘‘trust’’ and ‘‘love,’’ guiding their offspring toward the
‘‘smoothest paths,’’ the ‘‘greenest pastures,’’ the ‘‘safest’’ locations for rest and
sleep. Lotz even offers us an actual ‘‘tracking device’’ that explicitly reflects
the essence of the tracking arrangement among humans during the early
period when she alludes to a ‘‘swarm’’ of ‘‘chicks’’ following after their mama
hen. But we don’t need Lotz’s chicks and hens to fathom the significance of
the pastoral metaphor in Christian thought and practice. We have our own
human experience, our own early stage of biological existence that provides
us not only with the nature of Christianity’s appeal to the human subcon-
scious but with the mnemonic mechanism through which arises the mysteri-
ous Holy Spirit when the Christian practitioner finds himself convinced by
the overall mythologic configuration to which he is exposed as he involves
himself in the magical enactments of the creed (baptism, prayer, the
Eucharist, and the Scriptural metaphors of vine and shepherd). ‘‘You and
I are the sheep,’’ and ‘‘the Good Shepherd is Jesus,’’ declares our theological
expert (Lotz, p. 141). As for the most decisive and revealing utterance in
the whole of Lotz’s rendition of Christianity through the pastoral metaphor,
it resides in her remark that the shepherd ‘‘maintained his responsibility’’
for his sheep ‘‘twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year in and year
out, for their entire lifetime’’ (my emphasis). Here is the very crossroads of
the human tracking systems both biological and symbolic in a single sentence,
if the reader will allow the pun. I mean, human beings do not receive from
their caregivers, their ‘‘shepherds,’’ all that the docile, ever-dependent sheep
receive. They are not led about (or allowed to follow after) for the entire
length of their lives. In contrast to the ovine little ones, the human ‘‘lambs’’
must separate from the caregiver/shepherd as their earthly existence goes for-
ward; they must relinquish their dependent reliance upon the big one, go
out on their own, confront the future with its dangers and challenges, includ-
ing, of course, the future’s final culmination (and termination) in death.
So what do the humans do when through their higher consciousness (ultimately
a tracking feature) they find themselves staring straight at the ‘‘biological dic-
tates’’ of separation, smallness, and morality? Well, what millions of them do
in our modern Western culture about which I am writing here is precisely
what this book has been suggesting they do from its inception: they discover
through the Christian religion that awaits them with open arms a way to keep
the original tracking arrangement alive by relocating it on the symbolic,
supernatural plane (Christianity’s infantilizing process); they subscribe to a
theological ‘‘story’’ about a spiritual ‘‘Shepherd,’’ a Parent-God, who contin-
ues to love and watch over them (track them) ‘‘for their entire lifetime,’’ long
after the separation stage of their development has transpired. In this way,
they simply remove, or deny, the problematic biological dictates, thereby
diminishing the uncertainty and anxiety that attends them in their vulner-
able, separated state, or alternatively, increasing their adaptation to the
environment in which they reside and function. Christianity, the ‘‘environ-
mental tracking device’’ (Wilson, p. 284), has spied the destabilizing dangers.
Human beings are not separate, says the Christian creed; they are not alone,
and small, and vulnerable; they do not face a future that leads ineluctably to
death, extinction, and removal from the world and from all the loved ones
that world contains. On the contrary, human beings will be shepherded for
all eternity, led by the hand, in the care of a perfect parental presence through
whom they will know only security, love, and everlasting life.
Neil T. Anderson, in a section titled ‘‘God’s Love Reaches into the
Future,’’9 makes the matter crystal clear. ‘‘With God,’’ he writes,
we have an eternal relationship that cannot be overcome by the temporal

calamities of life. . . . Our heavenly Father is the Lord of Eternity. We should
have no fear of tomorrow, death, demons, or eternity. The shepherd of our souls
says, ‘‘My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give
them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of
my Father’s hand (John 10:27–29).’’
(p. 135)
Anderson concludes with the assertion ‘‘our relationship with God is not a
question of our ability to hang on to Him. It really isn’t within our own per-
sonal power to do that anyway. The fact is, God holds on to us, and He has
the power to keep us securely and safely in His hand’’ (p. 135). Can we fail
to perceive the upshot? Powerless, utterly dependent, led by the hand like
a little child who is apt to get lost, the Christian ‘‘lamb’’ follows after the
Shepherd into a psychological/neurological realm of perfect ‘‘security’’ and
perfect ‘‘safety’’ both of which are his to enjoy forevermore. There is no
separation, no vulnerability, no future in the anxiety-inducing sense of
ordinary time leading to one’s ultimate extinction. As in the early period of
symbiotic merger with the caregiver, the period during which the organ
relationship of parent and newcomer places the child within the emotional
orbit of his natural controller and guide, the infantilized Christian is ulti-
mately removed from the reach of ‘‘biological dictates’’ with the potential to
upset his adaptational equilibrium. ‘‘No organism,’’ wrote Wilson in the
materials with which we opened this section, ‘‘is ever perfectly adapted’’
(p. 74). Christianity, by fashioning another, supernatural ‘‘environment’’ in
which its adherents may track after an omnipotent Parent-God with the
capacity to dispense ‘‘eternal’’ security and safety, strives to give Wilson’s
realistic, earthly observation the lie.
Applications: The Pastoral Metaphor at Work

To track the pastoral metaphor to its psychological/neurological origins in
the early period allows us fully to perceive, fully to understand, a veritable
host of Christian materials that are otherwise obscured by conventional and
ultimately fatuous significations. Write Blackaby and King,
God is far more interested in a love relationship with you than He is in what
you can do for Him. His desire is for you to love Him. . . . You can trust Him
to guide you and provide for you. . . . Agree with God that you will follow
Him [track Him] one day at a time. Agree to follow Him even when He does
not spell out all the details. Agree that you will let Him be your Way.10
Pray to God thusly, instruct Blackaby and King at this juncture: ‘‘Lord, I will
do anything that your kingdom requires of me. Wherever You want me to
be, I’ll go. Whatever the circumstances, I’m willing to follow. If You want
to meet a need through my life, I am your servant; and I will do whatever
is required’’ (p. 37). Rather than abandon such material to whatever it hap-
pens to signify for whoever happens to read it or utter it or think it—it
can mean, simply, anything—we must recognize its specific power and
appeal within the framework of Christianity’s infantilizing process. Blackaby
and King are looking to recapture a ‘‘love relationship’’ they once knew and
deeply internalized as they ‘‘trusted’’ and ‘‘followed’’ after the big one during
the period of their lives when the caregiver’s ‘‘way’’ was the only trustworthy,
loving, gratifying way and when the follower’s will was entirely bound up
with the will of the omnipotent parental presence, the proverbial lord of
the nursery. In other words, it makes no difference to the Christian what the
particulars of his or her following are—to work for the Salvation Army, to
forgive the family members he or she rejected as a youth, to go off as a mis-
sionary in the outback of Australia, to stay at home and raise the kids, or a
thousand other things. What ultimately matters is that one returns psycho-
logically or inwardly to the ‘‘love relationship,’’ the putative will-lessness,
the ‘‘trust,’’ the sense of tracking and union that one knew ‘‘in the begin-
ning.’’ The worshiper feels loved, secured, guided, and bonded when he gets
back to this arrangement with a big one, and he gets back to it precisely
(how else?) by mentally becoming a will-less, trusting, loving, and tracking
‘‘infant’’ once again. The Christian religion always works for those who
become ‘‘little children’’ because whatever it is that one is doing, he gains
a sense of connection through his implicit mnemonic rediscovery of the
little one’s ‘‘way’’ (Blackaby and King, p. 37), the little one’s inner world.
The magical identity with its promise of loving union and eternal security
lessens or even removes the anxiety, or perhaps the existential discomfort,
that attends the biological identity of separate, vulnerable, time-bound mortal
man or woman.
Here are a few more citations from Blackaby and King that tell us why
‘‘a love relationship with God’’ is so important: ‘‘He loves you. He knows
what is best for you [if the reader had a childhood he’ll remember that
one]. Only He can guide you to invest your life in worthwhile ways.
The guidance will come as you walk with Him and listen to Him [track
and recognize His ‘‘voice’’ as in John 10:4]’’ (p. 91). Or again,
God wants us to adjust our lives to Him so He can do through us what He

wants to do. . . . We are His servants, and we adjust our lives to what He is
about to do and to His ways of doing it. If we will not submit God will let us
follow our own device [that is, allow us not to track Him].
(p. 106)
Or still again, this time through a heartfelt supplication titled My Surrender to

God’s Invitation:
God, when You invite me to join You in Your work, I will respond immediately.
I will adjust my life to You. Show me how to respond to what You lovingly
reveal to me. It is an awesome privilege to be in a love relationship with You
and have You trust me to join in Your work. I am ready to join You. Show me
Your timing. Make clear to me what You are doing. I praise You that You have
promised to complete whatever You start. I surrender to Your invitation. Lead
me to where I should begin.
(pp. 129–30)
Clearly, the tracking metaphor, the ‘‘following,’’ the ‘‘guidance,’’ the ‘‘walking
with God,’’ the ‘‘obedience’’ and ‘‘surrender’’—all of this—is paramount in a
context that is left wide open. What does it mean to ‘‘walk with’’ or ‘‘listen to’’
God, to ‘‘adjust’’ one’s life to what God wants one to do, to ‘‘submit’’ to His
‘‘will,’’ to be ‘‘led’’ to ‘‘where one should begin,’’ and all the rest of it? Over and
over again we hear this sort of thing on television, or in church; over and over
again we read such declarations in the Christian literature, as here. The answer
is, it means whatever the Christian wants it to mean, whatever he happens to
consider godly in his moment of inspiration, for whatever reasons he manufac-
tures through his consciousness and his subconsciousness, the latter of which is
not available to him when his putative will-lessness gives way to his desired goal.
The specifics do not matter. What matters, as I’ve suggested, is the magical sense
that one is back in the dependent, symbiotic relationship of trust, and love, and
uninterrupted tracking in which one luxuriated early on. When the Christian
arouses through his implicit recollection the feeling of being in as opposed to
out, the ‘‘way’’ of the Lord, whatever it happens to be, has made itself known.
Does the Holy Spirit, perchance, have a hand in all this? Of course it does,
for the Holy Spirit is itself but a magical metaphor of the addictive recollec-
tion one craves as he strives to track the Big One’s commanding presence or
‘‘voice’’ in his life. ‘‘Is it important to know when the Holy Spirit is speaking
to you,’’ ask Blackaby and King? They immediately reply, ‘‘Yes!’’ Then come
the words, ‘‘How do you know what the Holy Spirit is saying’’ (p. 176)? An
excellent question! Here is the answer, to which we must pay very close atten-
tion: ‘‘I cannot give you a formula,’’ writes Blackaby, now speaking for both
himself and his co-author;
I can tell you that you will know His voice when He speaks (John 10:4). You must
decide that you only want His will. You must dismiss any selfish or fleshy desire of
your own. Then as you start to pray, the Spirit of God starts to touch your heart
and cause you to pray in the direction of God’s will. ‘‘It is God who works in
you both to will and to do for His good pleasure’’ (Phil. 2:13). . . . When you pray,
anticipate that the Holy Spirit already knows what God has ready for your life.
(p. 176)
Through precisely this methodology for contacting the Holy Spirit does
the underlying, appetitive psychology of ‘‘doing God’s work,’’ or ‘‘following
God’s way,’’ emerge within the framework of Christianity’s infantilizing process.
The worshiper is instructed to act out, to imitate (homeopathic magic) the
assertion of John 10:4 that ‘‘the sheep follow him: for they know his voice’’
through the ritual of prayer, a ritual, as we previously established, in which
the supplicant adopts specifically the role of the helpless, dependent little one
crying out to the loving, omnipotent Big One for succor and support. If this
behavior awakens the implicit recollection of parental ministration and care,
then the putative ‘‘Holy Spirit,’’ right on schedule, will prompt one’s ‘‘heart’’
to pray ‘‘in the direction of God’s will,’’ and we are back to Blackaby and King’s
opening assertion, the significance of which is now in full view, that ‘‘God is far
more interested in a love relationship with you than He is in what you can do
for Him. His desire is for you to love Him’’ (p. 36). Accordingly, the tracker,
the follower, the worshipful lamb whose will now belongs entirely to the
Shepherd and whose ‘‘fleshly’’ or adult ‘‘desires’’ have now been entirely
‘‘dismissed’’ reaches his ultimate, magical goal, namely, symbiotic union with
the Lord. No longer ‘‘lost’’ in the biological world, which means existing
without a ‘‘love relationship’’ with the Big One, but doing the Almighty’s
‘‘work’’ on the spiritual plane, which means doing whatever one’s mind has
happened to create as a worthy goal, the believer has come full circle, from
the early period of security and innocence to anxiety-inducing separation
(including the awareness of death) and back again to the realm of eternal
provision and care. The ‘‘formula’’ here, needless to say, is the formula for the
Christian religion as a whole; Blackaby and King’s extended discussion of
how one goes about learning to ‘‘follow’’ God’s ‘‘way,’’ or to do ‘‘God’s work,’’
is merely one more facet of the infantilizing procedure. What are those
concluding lines of Charles Wesley’s wishful prayer cited earlier?
Concealed in the cleft of thy side,

Eternally held in thy heart.11
This, in the final analysis, is all a Christian really wants.

We no longer have to wonder, then, what the word ‘‘lost’’ signifies when
theologian H. Richard Niebuhr tells us in a prototypical Christian moment
that Jesus ‘‘seeks and saves the lost.’’12 We have the pastoral metaphor, the
‘‘lost sheep of Israel,’’ to inform our understanding as we derive psychologi-
cal/neurological specificity as opposed to flaccid generality from the utter-
ance. Although its precise emotional, circumstantial denotation will differ
in each and every case (no two snowflakes are exactly alike, etc.), ‘‘lost’’ signi-
fies in the Christian context separate, alone, isolated, abandoned, on one’s
own, or, to turn the coin over, not merged, not bonded, not joined to a big
one, not contained symbiotically in the body of salvational Jesus—in short,
not receiving the adaptational sensation one receives as he enjoys the
deep-seated, implicit recollection of the loving, ministering parental presence
(the ‘‘Holy Spirit’’). It is when the Christian’s participation in the creed’s
infantilizing magic allows him to follow his memorial capacities all the way
back to the ‘‘beginning,’’ to his original security-inducing interactions with
the nurturing biological caregiver, that he finds his ‘‘way,’’ which means his
escape from the dreaded biological dictates of his natural, mortal existence
on a ‘‘fallen’’ planet.
The reader may be thinking, wait a minute! Surely within a Christian
context ‘‘lost’’ may have a moral denotation, may indicate the seeker’s failure
to lead a moral life, one based on Christian principles, one grounded in
the decent, chaste, substance-free treatment of oneself and others. Is not
Christianity ultimately a moral system, a moral guide to human conduct?
The answer, of course, is that Christian morality does not stand apart from
Christianity’s infantilizing process. The two go together, in powerful com-
bination. To be a good, obedient Christian, to respect Christianity’s moral
teachings, is also to be in a bonded relationship with the Savior as His ‘‘little
child,’’ His ‘‘sheep,’’ His helpless, dependent follower, as one He will never
‘‘forsake’’ or ‘‘abandon’’: follow Christ ‘‘as dear children,’’ not as ‘‘children of
disobedience,’’ instructs the New Testament (Eph. 5:1, 6). Accordingly, to
be ‘‘bad,’’ disobedient, unlawful, unchaste, unwholesome, alcohol or drug
addicted, or even selfish and insincere is for the Christian to feel ‘‘lost,’’ alone,
‘‘out in the cold,’’ without the sense of parental connection to a big one, to a
loving source of security and succor—a grievous, painful, extreme version of
the very feelings of biological separation that goad the bond to Jesus into life
in the first place. When the drunk, or the drug addict, or the prostitute on the
street, or the bank robber on parole finds Jesus and begins to participate in
Christianity’s infantilizing rites and narratives, to do the magic in short, he
or she also discovers the long-forgotten inward sensation of being valued,
and cherished, and held. That is what impels him or her to stay the course.
‘‘Go out there again’’ (note the word ‘‘out’’ as opposed to ‘‘in’’), the reformed
Christian asks himself ? ‘‘Lose this feeling of self-love and self-worth based
upon my Christian faith? Not a chance’’! As human beings, we don’t need
the supernatural to achieve morality. The moral impulse can take vigorous
root within the natural, secular realm. What resides at the foundation of
Christianity’s moral directives is the emotional, psychological tie to the super-
natural Big One Who, on the plane of magic, holds His ‘‘dear child’’ forever
in His heart of hearts.
With our increasingly rich, perhaps newly found awareness of what resides
at the psychological/neurological ground of the pastoral metaphor, its devel-
opmental, emotional relationship to the engendering experiences upon
which our lives as biological organisms move forward ‘‘in the beginning,’’ let’s
sample a few excerpts from famous Christian prayers both past and present.
Let’s get a feeling for what Christians are actually saying and seeking beneath
the surface imagery of certain heartfelt expressions of their faith.
Here is Saint Augustine:
I thank thee, O my Light, that Thou didst shine upon me; that Thou didst teach
my soul what Thou wouldst be to me, and didst incline Thy face in pity unto me;
Thou, Lord, hast become my Hope, my comfort, my Strength, my All. In Thee
doth my soul rejoice. . . . When I loved darkness, I knew Thee not, but wandered
on from night to night. But Thou didst lead me out of that blindness. Thou didst
take me by the hand and call me to thee, and now I can thank Thee, and Thy
mighty voice which hath penetrated to my inmost heart.13
We do not know, and we cannot know, what Augustine refers to when he

writes of his ‘‘blindness,’’ of the ‘‘darkness’’ through which he ‘‘wanders,’’ lost
and miserable. Perhaps he refers to his youthful absorption in Zoroastrian-
ism, or to his powerful, unruly sexual nature against which he struggled for
many years. It doesn’t matter. Each reader will apply Augustine’s supplication
to his own experience. What does matter here is the invariant Christian solu-
tion to the dilemma, whatever it happens to be, namely, becoming the
Almighty’s dutiful ‘‘little child,’’ putting one’s ‘‘hand’’ into the hand of the
Big One, listening to God’s mighty ‘‘voice’’ as in the pastoral metaphor
explicitly—in short, tracking after the Lord (as an ‘‘environmental tracking
device’’) and thus refinding a version of the homeostasis or equilibrium one
enjoyed early on through one’s dependent, symbiotic interaction with the
biological provider. When the confused, insecure, miserable human creature
submits to Christianity’s infantilizing process, he transforms himself into a
contented, even joyous member of the species by awakening his implicit
recollection of the time in which he actually knew the guidance and the loving
security he craves.
‘‘Thank you, Father, for your love,’’ writes Corrie ten Boom, and then,
Thank you for hearing our prayers and giving us that which You know is best for
us. We thank You that we need never walk in darkness, because you are leading
us and showing us the way, step by step. Teach us, Lord, to be obedient. . . . Show
us in what way we still hold on to our own will and desires, and give us the courage
to leave all in Your hands, Thank you, Father, that You will always speak to us when
we come to You with a heart which is willing to hear and willing to do as You say.
(p. 23)
Once again, whatever the dilemma the supplicator confronts, its solution
resides in tracking the Big One Who ‘‘knows what is best’’ for His sheep,
Who leads them and shows them the way, step by baby step, as in the opening
stages of their biological lives. The prayer beseeches the Deity to instruct
her not merely in ‘‘obedience’’ but in ‘‘leaving’’ her ‘‘desires’’ and her ‘‘will’’
entirely His hands, an accomplishment that can occur only within the
realm of implicit recollection, the memorial trace (or phenomenology) of
the early period when the ‘‘will’’ and the ‘‘desires’’ of the newcomer are
inextrically intertwined with the direction of the omnipotent biological pro-
vider. Simply to brush one’s teeth and comb one’s hair negates in reality the
notion of ‘‘leaving’’ everything in ‘‘God’s hands’’ unless one behaves with an
inward sense of the Big One’s overarching participation in one’s activities,
a sense that drifts toward consciousness from the implicit memorial realm
as it is aroused by Christianity’s infantilizing beliefs and practices.
‘‘Lord what can I say?’’ asks Oswald Chambers at the commencement of
his heartfelt supplication. He goes on,
Keep me simply Thine. To body, soul and spirit come with the influx of life.
Lord, through all the multitudinous duties keep me calm, ennoble by Thy touch
and tenderness. O Lord, it is Thee I want, strong and mighty and pure. Settle me
and quieten me down in Thee. Thy word says, ‘‘Casting all your cares upon Him,
for He careth for you.’’ What a wonder those words are! Lord, I look to thee that
I may be renewed in the spirit of my mind. How entirely I look to Thee! Unto
Thee do I come in great and glad expectancy. Cleanse me from flurry, and keep
me purely and calmly Thine. Gather me into concentrated peace in Thee.
(p. 57)
Chambers captures for us unmistakably the loving, symbiotic union of parent

and little one during the opening stages of our biological lives. We’re returned
to the time during which the ‘‘tender touch’’ of the caregiver ‘‘settled’’ and
‘‘quieted down’’ the agitated, exhausted newcomer. Note above all the way
in which the little one’s relief transpires ‘‘in’’ the Big One: ‘‘quieten me down
in Thee’’ (my emphasis). The symbiotic interaction of the early period is as
much emotional as it is physical, as much a matter of feeding the newcomer
with loving care as with bodily nourishment. We never learn from Chambers
(as we never learn from Augustine) the specific nature of his trials, his dis-
comforts, his ‘‘multitudinous duties’’ because the only thing that matters to
him, as to Christians generally, is the invariant solution as follows: ‘‘Gather
me into concentrated peace in Thee.’’ To be in the body/spirit of the Big
One, calm, secure, a perfectly adapted babe in arms, as it were, is the Chris-
tian’s ultimate goal. Were we to ‘‘translate’’ Chamber’s supplication into the
underlying infantile feelings that serve finally as its emotional inspiration we
would have the Big One saying to the little one in a soothing voice, ‘‘There,
there; hush now; shh; everything is going to fine; there, there.’’ Christians
who follow after the Shepherd are seeking, one and all, such tender, parental
reassurance as they go about their stressful, biosocial lives.
Observe the lack of homeostasis, of soothing adaptation to the stressful
environment, that confronts the Christian who fails to track after the Deity.
‘‘Oh blessed Lord!’’ begins Longfellow,
How much I need

Thy light to guide me on my way!
So many hands, that without heed,
Still touch Thy wounds and make them bleed,
So many feet that day by day
Still wander from thy fold astray!
Feeble at best in my endeavor!
I see but cannot reach the height
That lies for ever in the light;
And yet for ever and for ever,
When seeming just within my grasp,
I feel my feeble hands unclasp,
And sink discouraged into night—
For Thine own purpose Thou has sent
The strife and the discouragement.
(p. 56)
Here is a ‘‘sheep’’ not only ‘‘wandering’’ from the ‘‘fold’’ but feeling miserable
about it. We don’t know the nature of the ‘‘night’’ into which Longfellow
‘‘sinks’’ anymore than we know the nature of Augustine’s ‘‘darkness’’ or
Chambers’s ‘‘duties,’’ but we do know what Longfellow is missing without his

‘‘guide’’ to lead him on his ‘‘way’’: the adaptational feeling of comfort and
security that arises through symbiotic bonding with the Deity. The supplica-
tor tries to make the best of his inability to grasp and hold onto the ‘‘height’’
that represents the Big One by characterizing his ‘‘strife and discouragement’’
as some sort of divine lesson, or test. What we’re left with, however, is a vivid
expression of the inner torment and hopelessness that may arise in those who,
for whatever reason, cannot conjure up the alternative, magical identity that
emerges through Christianity’s infantilizing process.
Here is George Matheson:
When Thou sayst that I must, my heart says, ‘‘I can.’’ My strength is propor-
tional to the strength of those cords that bind me. I am never so unrestrained
as when I am constrained by Thy love. Evermore, Thou Divine Spirit, guide
me by this instinct of the right. Put round about my heart the cord of Thy cap-
tivating love, and draw me wither in my own light I would not go. Bind me to
Thyself as thou bindest the planets to the sun, that it may become the very law
of my nature to be led by Thee. May I be content to know that goodness and
mercy shall follow me without waiting to see them in advance of me.
(p. 101)
Could there be a more substantial, arresting confirmation of this book’s the-

sis? The supplicator, with Psalm 23 explicitly in his mind (‘‘The Lord is my
shepherd. . . . Goodness and mercy shall follow me’’) asks to be ‘‘drawn’’ after
the Big One by a ‘‘cord of captivating love,’’ to be ‘‘bound’’ to the Big One
(‘‘Bind me to Thyself ’’) as the ‘‘planets’’ are bound to the ‘‘sun’’ through its
controlling gravitational power. Rather than go about the world as a grown-
up ‘‘on his own,’’ Matheson would be ‘‘led’’ by the omnipotent Deity, the
‘‘constrainer’’ whose ‘‘love’’ awakens within him a sense of freedom or unre-
straint, by which we understand, of course, the ‘‘freedom’’ that wells up
within the child when he feels himself utterly in the hands of the all-
powerful, protective parent who ‘‘takes care of everything.’’ Matheson’s sup-
plication provides us with what we can think of as a magical map through
which the worshiper may negotiate or track the environment in which he dis-
covers himself, thus assuring both his avoidance of those ‘‘biological dictates’’
(separation, vulnerability, and death) that engender anxiety, even terror, and
his adherence to the necromantic, supernatural promises (continuous paren-
tal guidance and care and immortality) that remove the dreaded bugbears of
his natural existence.
Within the natural as opposed to the supernatural realm the production of
maps is integrally linked to locational memory and spatial orientation.
‘‘Philosophers, scholars, and brain researchers,’’ writes Hanspeter A. Mallot in

his seminal paper ‘‘Finding Our Way,’’ ‘‘have long suspected that spatial ori-
entation is more than a special ability—it may be one evolutionary root of
memory or thought itself.’’14 For example, ‘‘Cordula Nitsch and her col-
leagues at the University of Basel in Switzerland showed in experiments with
gerbils that increasing level of damage to the hippocampus, a deep and
ancient brain structure, increasingly impaired both the animals’ spatial orien-
tation and memory retention in navigating a course they had previously
mastered’’ (p. 77). Mallot goes on, ‘‘We see today that many of the idioms
we use in daily speech have spatial roots: we ‘get oriented’ to new situations,
try to ‘find ways out’ of our problems, and ask colleagues to ‘walk us through’
proposed plans’’ (p. 77). Finally, declares Mallot,
It is not inconceivable that over the course of human evolution a memory struc-
ture developed for spatial orientation—one that was later employed for other
cognitive functions. The uses to which lower animals apply spatial cognition
implies as much. Or to put it more provocatively: in the animal kingdom,
spatial cognition is the most widespread form of thought.
(p. 77)
Within the magical realm of Christianity’s infantilizing process, by contrast, the

worshiper’s map consists entirely of the Deity’s spiritual body, the transcendent
field of His divine will, or in neurological/psychological terms, the implicit
memory of the ‘‘orientation’’ the worshiper experienced early on when his
world, his universe, was intertwined integrally with the parental presence, the
caregiver to whom he was bound as a helpless, dependent newcomer.
The advent of spatial awareness as we encounter it in Mallot’s discussion
commences in earnest only after the little one develops fully into childhood
(ages 4–6) and toward adolescence, in other words, only as separation from
the matrix and functional autonomy gain significant, irreversible momen-
tum. 15 It is when the developing human begins to perceive himself ‘‘out
there’’ and ‘‘on his own’’ that he may discover himself increasingly in need
of both his map of ‘‘spatial orientation’’ (where I am; where I was) and his
alternative, magical map of symbiotic interaction with the all-powerful
protector and provider, the otherworldly map that complements (or even off-
sets) the natural one by positioning the believer within the controlling field of
the Big One’s will (Matheson’s planet in the grip of the sun). Write Blackaby
and King in their volume Experiencing God,
As He fills you with His presence, He will guide you to do things. But even as
you do those things, He will be the One at work through you to accomplish
His purposes. He is all you need. The Christ in you is your way. He is your
‘‘map.’’ When you follow His leadership one day at a time, you will always be
right in the middle of God’s will for your life.16
To exist within the body, within the will of the supernatural Big One magi-
cally resolves the natural dilemmas of existing within one’s own separate, vul-
nerable, mortal body, one’s own fallible, earthly will, not to mention the wills
of other imperfect human beings. ‘‘Sometimes,’’ declares the handbook Our
Daily Bread,
life demands that we weather a storm. At other times it puts us to the test
of tedium. We may feel stuck. What we want most is just out of reach.
But whether we find ourselves in a crisis of circumstance or in a place where
the spiritual wind has been taken out of our sails, we need to trust God for guid-
ance. The Lord, who is sovereign over changing circumstances, will eventually
guide us to our desired heaven.17
As in the supplications we’ve just finished examining, the exact nature of the
‘‘storm’’ or the ‘‘tedium’’ or the ‘‘crisis’’ is left wide open and does not ulti-
mately matter. Of sole significance is the original map of one’s existence as
it remains available through the jogging of implicit memory, namely, feeling
oneself in the sphere of the Big One’s will, guided, protected, secure among
the flock, and on the way to the Shepherd’s ‘‘haven.’’ When we are ‘‘led by
the Spirit,’’ asserts Our Daily Bread in another place,18 ‘‘our lives will be char-
acterized by joy, peace, and self-control,’’ which is to say, we will have found
our way magically to an emotional/spiritual ‘‘orientation’’ in which the all-
powerful, loving companion constitutes the very ground of our experience.
I’ll leave it to the Christians themselves to bring all this together in a cou-
ple of vivid, unforgettable passages. Note, in particular, the way actual and
magical maps coalesce as they come into play. Remember, too, that we’re still
on the track of the pastoral metaphor’s ultimate significance. When James
Hewett found God, we learn from God Speaks: Devotional,
It seemed as though life was rather like a bike ride, but it was a tandem bike.
God was in the back helping me pedal. I don’t know just when it was that He
suggested we change places, but life has not been the same since. When He took
the lead, it was all I could do to hang on! He took me down delightful paths, up
mountains, and through rocky places— at breakneck speeds.
I was worried and anxious, and asked, ‘‘Where are you taking me’’? He
laughed and didn’t answer, and I started to learn trust. I forgot my boring life
and entered into adventure. When I’d say, ‘‘I’m scared,’’ He’d lean back and
touch my hand. At first I did not trust Him to be in control of my life.

I thought He’d wreck it, but He knows bike secrets—how to make it lean to take
sharp corners, dodge large rocks, and speed through scary passages. I’m beginning
to enjoy the view and the cool breeze on my face with my delightful, constant
Companion.19
God Speaks: Devotional titles the section containing Hewett’s testimonial

‘‘Let’s Do Life.—God’’ (p. 148), and the title takes us to the heart of Chris-
tianity’s map for its followers. Going about on one’s own, apart from the
idealized parental Deity, is no way to live. One requires a ‘‘constant
Companion,’’ a Big One who is always there, not merely to show one the
way through Scripture and supplication, but to remove the sense of emptiness,
listlessness, and ‘‘boredom’’ that comes from one’s own company. When one
returns to the old, carefree days of ‘‘adventure,’’ the days in which one ran
outside to play knowing the big ones, mom and dad, were there to look after
one, to ‘‘touch one’s hand’’ if one becomes ‘‘scared,’’ then does one discover
‘‘life,’’ or the delight of one’s existence. For countless millions, the journey,
the road, the map is fully acceptable only ‘‘in tandem,’’ only in the sphere of
the Big One’s tender, loving will, the Big One’s ultimate control of ‘‘everything.’’
‘‘It’s human nature to fear the future,’’ maintains God Speaks: Devotional in
another place, and then,
After all, none of us knows what’s around the next bend. Life is a series of hills and
valleys, sharp turns and bumpy roads. Sometimes we’ll be sailing down an inter-
state highway, enjoying the scenery, when we hit an unexpected detour that takes
us miles away from our destination. What if we make a wrong turn and get lost?
Don’t worry. God’s already been there before you. He knows where all the
ruts and potholes and speed traps are. If you open His map book—the Bible
—He’ll show you the best route to take to avoid the worst roads. You can trust
God to lead you every step of the way. He knows the beginning and the end, as
well as the middle of the journey. He will walk right by your side through every
circumstance of life. And He will never leave you. There is nothing to fear when
you are walking with Him. There is one catch. You actually have to listen and
let Him teach you. You’ll wander around lost if you refuse to read the map
or ask for directions [that is, pray]. So trust Him to lead you in The right
direction. All you have to do is ask! . . .
God knows all your secrets, your hidden fears, your desperate needs, and
even your innermost thoughts. He loves you anyway. Ask for his help to get
your life back on track.
(pp. 39–41)
The formula here is reading Scripture (explicitly a map, as Christ is a map in

Blackaby and King) and prayer: ‘‘ask and ye shall receive’’ (Matt. 7:8). What
we must recall from our earlier discussion of supplication is the psychological
‘‘orientation’’ required for its successful usage. To pray fruitfully, to find God,
is to adopt an attitude of helplessness and dependency, to approach the Lord
as the small child approaches the parent—in a word, to act out the ubiquitous
asking and receiving of the biological beginning through homeopathic magic.
As one does this, as one asks, one ‘‘automatically’’ receives, which is to say, the
magical behavior conjures up memorially the period during which the care-
giver was there to meet one’s needs, to guide one, to comfort one, to hold
one, thus removing adaptationally sources of stress, or disequilibrium, by
providing the reassurance of symbiotic bonding. And this is, of course, what
the Devotional strives to accomplish by providing the believer with the
infantilizing map of Scripture and supplication. The nature of the problem
doesn’t matter. The Devotional makes this perfectly clear: ‘‘God’s already been
there.’’ What matters is to sit with the Good Book, to go down on one’s knees
as God’s ‘‘little child,’’ and to savor the implicit mnemonic sensation that
someone is ‘‘right by one’s side,’’ leading one ‘‘every step of the way,’’ Some-
one Who will ‘‘never leave you,’’ Who is entirely ‘‘trustworthy,’’ Who will
show you ‘‘the best route,’’ and above all, ‘‘Who loves you’’ unconditionally.
In the final analysis, the maps of Scripture and supplication in this passage
equal the ‘‘constant Companion’’ of the previous passage belonging to
Hewett. All Christian roads, to echo the old Roman saying, lead to the body
of Christ inside of which the worshiper discovers his ideal, stress-free loca-
tion: ‘‘there is nothing to fear when you are walking with Him.’’ He and
His Word are one. He is the map.
Such passages help us to grasp analytically that mysterious enactment of
Christianity (and other faiths) known generally as ‘‘the pilgrimage’’ wherein
worshipers (the sheep) actually indulge themselves in explicit bodily tracking
behaviors, actually walking about in search of some magical goal integrally
tied to the Almighty (the Shepherd). With supplication, as we’ve just under-
scored, believers act out the ubiquitous asking and receiving of the early
period, thus awakening mnemonically the loving dependence in which they
luxuriated as little ones. With the pilgrimage believers act out another major
facet of their early days on earth, namely, their instinctual predilection to fol-
low after the big one, the parental guide upon whose loving ministration they
rely in what is literally a life-or-death biological context. The worshiper
tracks, of course, for a variety of specific, magical purposes, two of which
stand out: (1) to enhance his spiritual worthiness by concentrating on the
map that guides him to the ‘‘holy place,’’ the shrine or church or abbey or
tomb (Christ in Jerusalem; Muhammad in Mecca) from which the Deity’s

magnetic power emanates or radiates, thus positioning the pilgrim directly
in the ‘‘field’’ or the Big One’s will or control, once again as Matheson
expresses it in his analogy of the planet ‘‘bound’’ to and ‘‘led’’ by the sun,
and once again as the newcomer maps his initial biological environment at
the center of which resides the omnipotent parental figure; (2) to restore his
health, or well-being, to pursue the Almighty’s capacity to reverse the course
of nature in general and the ravages of disease or injury in particular; just as
the mama or the daddy kisses the boo-boo and ‘‘makes’’ the little one ‘‘all bet-
ter’’ early on, so will the Big One, through His infinite, unconditional love,
remove the affliction and restore His little one’s soundness in the magical
domain of supernatural convictions. Thousands of such trackings have tran-
spired throughout history, and while we cannot, obviously, account for all
of them, or designate nuances, we can discern the sameness of, the persistence
of, the motivational core: to awaken the sensation of being in the ‘‘sheepfold,’’
or ‘‘flock,’’ or home with the loving, all-powerful Shepherd, not out there on
one’s own, small, vulnerable, mortal, ‘‘lost’’ in a dangerous and often merci-
less world from which one cannot expect anything in the way of uncondi-
tional parental affection and acceptance, let alone the removal of disease or
the restoration of damaged organs or limbs. The pilgrimage, in short, relies
upon the same infantilizing magic that we found in the baptismal rite, in
prayer, in the Eucharist, in the metaphor of Vine and Shepherd, and in a
dozen other aspects of the Christian religion and its inspirational guidebook
or map, the New Testament.
‘‘O God,’’ writes D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, ‘‘grant us to know that the one
born of old in Bethlehem has also been born in our hearts.’’ And then, ‘‘A liv-
ing Christ within, never leaving us. O lord, follow us to our homes, our work,
wherever we go and in whatever we do. May we know thou wilt never forsake
us, and witness the sweet intimations of thy nearness and grace.’’ And finally,
Bless O God, those who long to know Thee better and the truth more truly.
And now may the grace of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the love of
God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit abide with us throughout the
remainder of our short and uncertain earthly pilgrimage and forever more.20
The whole of one’s earthly existence, then, is metaphorically contextualized

through the pilgrimage, through tracking behavior in which the worshiper fol-
lows the map that leads to the Big One’s will, control, power, guidance, mercy,
or alternatively, through tracking behaviors in which the Big One permanently
‘‘shepherds’’ His flock, following His little ones to home, to work, to wherever
they go. Of overriding significance is the manner in which separation from the
Big One, from the Parent-God, from the matrix, is apprehended and explicitly
characterized as forsaking, renouncing, abandoning, as taking away parental
nearness, the ‘‘sweetness’’ of primal union and security. Here precisely is the
presentational utterance that discloses for us the neurological/psychological tie
to the early period, to the original separation and loss the reversal of which, or
the denial of which, is the Christian religion’s ultimate aim.
The metaphor of the pilgrimage, like the acting out of the pilgrimage,
mnemonically resuscitates at the feeling level both sides of the original symbi-
otic union, its compelling ‘‘sweetness’’ as big one and little one interfuse
through an organic relationship designed to further the survival of the spe-
cies, and as big one and little one experience not merely the imperfections
of the early time, but the inevitable, selectional separation in which the origi-
nal symbiosis culminates of necessity. The ‘‘pilgrim’’ wants the Big One to be
‘‘near,’’ and the pilgrim also feels deep within his core the anxiety of his
earthly, biological presence on the planet. He longs for the ‘‘fellowship’’ of
the Holy Spirit, which means the sense of the Big One’s ‘‘nearness’’ during
the course of an ‘‘earthly pilgrimage’’ that is ultimately both ‘‘short’’ (mortal-
ity looming) and ‘‘uncertain’’ (anxiety at work in the worshiper at both the
conscious and unconscious levels). Once again, the pilgrim longs to be in,
not out, joined to the Big One, watched over or shepherded by the Big One
as he goes about his business in the world, ‘‘at home, at work, wherever’’ he
happens to be. The ‘‘motivation to be a pilgrim is complex,’’ the experts tell
us, but ‘‘one of the pilgrimage’s features must be that the devotee sees in it
something of the successful achievement of the whole of life including the
successful arrival at one’s final goal.’’21 Surely we don’t have to puzzle very
long over what that ‘‘final goal’’ might be. Lloyd-Jones’s supplication has
made that perfectly clear, along with the context of this book: to feel the ‘‘inti-
mations’’ (implicit recollections designated as the Holy Spirit) of the Big
One’s ‘‘nearness,’’ to go about tied inwardly to the Parent-God, to the loving
protector and guide Who will never ‘‘forsake,’’ never renounce, never aban-
don the members of His flock. The ‘‘goal’’ is union as union cancels out the
biological reality of separateness. According to Janet Collins in her recent
article on the vogue of pilgrimages in society today, the heart of the ‘‘spiritual
journey’’ is ‘‘the journey itself. . . . All spiritual roads lead to the same destina-
tion.’’22 To track, to follow, or to attain the sense of being shepherded, being
watched over by the Big One is what constitutes the ‘‘journey itself,’’ the acting
out of a basic, instinctual proclivity that, like the asking and receiving of
prayer, recreates the adaptational, survival behaviors of the early, precarious
stage of our natural existence.
Can a discussion of the pastoral metaphor culminate in any other way than
in a presentation of Psalm 23, one of the most influential Biblical utterances
for Jews and Christians alike? I don’t think so.
(1) The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

(2) He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still
waters.
(3) He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his
name’s sake.
(4) Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
(5) Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou
anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
(6) Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will
dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
The worshiper, or the suppliant, views the Lord as his Shepherd, as his careful
guide and protector. Immediately thereafter he strikes a blended maternal
and paternal note: he shall not want; the Herdsman-Master will accord
him everything he requires in the way of emotional and physical nourish-
ment. Dependent, submissive, following along, he will be made to lie down
in green pastures, a striking maternal image of lushness, of leisurely feeding,
chewing, swallowing, digesting, and sleeping; he will be led to the still water,
another vivid maternal image recalling both breast and womb, the peace of
symbiosis, the mirror-like, fluid surface in which the self is birthed into
awareness, existence, being. Such care, such provision, such recollection
of delicious maternal engendering and love adaptationally restores the
suppliant, pleases him soothingly in the innermost regions of his self-
consciousness, his subjectivity, especially as those regions are ruffled by the
tribulations of the journey. The suppliant returns to the paternal sphere.
The Shepherd is morally fastidious; He keeps His flock on stable, solid paths
of righteousness; He is covetous of His unimpeachable identity, His name,
His reputation as entirely dependable and prudent in His decisions for
the route of His flock. All of this, of course, is projectively reassuring to the
one who prays, who worships through the psalm. Such reassurance continues
unabated.
Although the worshiper, or the suppliant, must traverse the dark, harrow-
ing valley of the shadow, although as a member of a mortal flock he must
confront the final, terrifying separation of death, the reengulfment into the
valley-womb whence he arose, he will be fearless because he will not be alone;
the Shepherd will be there with His supportive staff, with His protective rod;
the suppliant will be heartened by the presence of his loyal, supernatural

companion. Ultimately, there will be no separation. The employment of
paternal and maternal themes goes forward as the overall pastoral framework
fades off. The Lord will continue to nourish the suppliant even in the pres-
ence of those who stand against him. What a humiliation for his foes!
The Lord will bless the suppliant, consecrate him, anoint his head with oil
(primary narcissistic homeostasis). What more could the suppliant want?
He cries out. His cup runneth over: both his inward emotional requirements
and his external physical requirements will not only be met but met in
abundance; the breast is moist, full, dripping with life-sustaining nectar.
Accordingly, the suppliant’s future is sure to go well (anxiety diminished), is
sure to contain goodness and mercy that will now follow the suppliant to
the end as the suppliant originally followed the Shepherd in the beginning.
The suppliant will dwell in the house of the Lord, in the paternal temple,
in the place of paternal worship, paternal power, and he will also dwell in
the home, in that ‘‘house,’’ in the maternal abode, in the place of rest and
safety, in the protective womb of the elemental nourisher. Moreover, and
finally, he will not dwell there for a limited period; he will not be forced to
relinquish his ‘‘house,’’ his home, his place of cohabitation with the parental
presence; on the contrary, he will dwell in that location forever. Ultimately
again, there will be no separation.
For the Christian the ‘‘house’’ or the home in which he will ‘‘dwell for
ever’’ is not simply the Church, the congregation of his fellow worshipers,
the wider world of Christian institutions as a whole, but supremely the body
of the Savior whose sacrifice has precipitated the salvational triumph over
death, the actual arrival of a world without end in the upper, heavenly reaches
into which Jesus eventually ascends after his emergence from the tomb.
Here, for a final time, are Wesley’s unforgettable syllables that provide us with
the fitting Christian conclusion to the illustrious Psalm 23:
Ah, show me that happiest place, The place of Thy people’s

abode, Where saints in an ecstasy gaze, And hang on a
crucified God.
‘Tis there I would always abide, And never a moment

depart, Concealed in the cleft of Thy side, Eternally held in
Thy heart.23
The ‘‘house of the Lord’’ for the Christian, then, is the ‘‘heart’’ of the ‘‘cruci-
fied God.’’ To that destination precisely does the Shepherd guide the mem-
bers of His flock. Where Judaism stops with the temple and the home,
Christianity pushes on to the interfusion of bodies, the intermixing of flesh

and of blood, to the primal obliteration of boundaries. For the Christian,
the body of Christ is the womb.
The Longing for God’s Face

Everywhere in the literature of Christianity we find worshipers longing to
see the face of God, to gaze upon the countenance of the Almighty, to know
Him by His face. What can this possibly mean? Does the Lord have a face, an
actual face? What about the Holy Spirit? He’s a person, we’re informed,
an actual person, and actual people have faces. We noted in Chapter 3,
Part One Billy Graham’s admission that the whole ‘‘subject’’ of the Holy Spirit
is ‘‘terribly difficult’’ and ‘‘beyond the limit of our minds to grasp fully.’’24
Does this include the ‘‘subject’’ of the Holy Spirit’s face? Graham tells us that
the Holy Spirit ‘‘hears,’’ ‘‘speaks,’’ and has a brain, or ‘‘intellect’’ (pp. 4–6).
Does this mean the ‘‘person’’ of the Holy Spirit has ears, a mouth, and a head,
as part of His countenance? What about Jesus? He probably existed near the
Sea of Galilee in ancient Israel some 30–40 years before the common era, as
we now call it in our secular society.25 When the worshiper looks upon the
face of Christ, does the worshiper see in his mind the features of a relatively
young Hebraic male from that location and period of history, a young Jew
in other words? Routinely in North America and Europe we see depictions
of Jesus in magazines, pamphlets, and books and on posters, billboards, and
on the television screen. Usually such items proffer an attractive, rather
Anglo-Saxon countenance with light eyes and light hair, a small, straight
nose, and a peaceful, gentle expression—a kind of movie star archetype if
I may employ ‘‘movie star’’ adjectivally. Is this the sort of ‘‘face’’ Christians
inwardly perceive in their moments of religious intensity? And what of the
Almighty, the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of everything, by which
I mean the infinite cosmos wherein we finite mortals are contained? Does
He too have a ‘‘face,’’ a physiognomy in the usual signification? Or is this
the wrong way to go about the whole issue? Does ‘‘seeing the face of God,’’
or ‘‘knowing the face of God,’’ imply an intimate, subjective sense of the
Lord’s presence, or Christ’s, or the Holy Spirit’s as opposed to the actual
sighting or beholding of a face? If so, why the reference to ‘‘face’’? Why bring
in ‘‘face’’ at all? Why not ‘‘presence’’ or ‘‘feeling’’ or ‘‘intimation’’ or ‘‘sugges-
tion’’ or something like that? The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary tells us that the
word ‘‘face’’ in the Old and New Testaments generally and in the Christian
tradition particularly indicates ‘‘the presence of the Deity,’’26 and thus the ques-
tion remains, why ‘‘face’’? I believe there is a way to understand all this fully
along naturalistic, psychological lines that go far beyond the ‘‘explanations’’

of our anthropomorphic predilections as a species and the prominent
employment of the word ‘‘face’’ in the Scripture that obviously only begs
the question. More specifically, I believe our analysis of the pastoral metaphor
in the evolutionary context of mapping and tracking allows us to demystify
all the religious usages and exegeses, and in the process, to obtain a clear,
straightforward grasp of how this persistent verbal tendency works in the
mind and body of the Christian faithful. Romano Guardini informs us in
his famous book on prayer that God ‘‘has no face as we understand it.’’27
Well then, let’s get to work and enlarge our understanding.
Recent neurological/psychological studies suggest that facial recognition
and facial tracking are instinctually implanted into human beings. Babies
have ‘‘a predisposition to look at faces’’ because faces in general, and the face
of the nurturer in particular, are inextricably bound up with their survival and
well-being. 28 Accordingly, facial recognition and tracking constitute an
‘‘evolutionary adaptation’’ (or ‘‘survival mechanism’’) for an utterly helpless,
infantile primate with nothing and no one to rely on for years besides the
big one who is there watching over him or her.29 Frederick V. Malmstrom
sums the matter up for us as follows:
Human facial recognition is a highly specialized ability, and it seems to be pre-

wired before birth in specific, visual processing areas of the brain. However, the
human newborn ability to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces
does not develop in infants until about two months of age. . . . An infant’s
inborn ability to recognize a generalized face is apparently evolutionarily quite
primitive. According to this research, the infant begins with the prototype
female ‘‘protoface’’ pre-wired visually into the midbrain, and then later utilizes
the cortical areas to add additional visual recognition cues, such as the hairline
and ear. . . . Obviously, one of the first and most frequent things a baby sees
and commits to memory is its mother’s face. . . . The infant’s immediate recog-
nition of a prototype female face, and especially that of its mother, is arguably
an important survival advantage.30
The mother’s face, then, is the infant’s first map of the world. He awakens not
to ‘‘creation’’ in some all-inclusive sense, but to the face of the caregiver, his
anchor for survival.
‘‘ ‘I’ll draw His face’—that is a refrain I’ve heard spoken in many languages
by children of Christian denominations.’’ Thus observes Robert Coles in his
seminal volume The Spiritual Life of Children.31 Coles proceeds to point out
that 90 percent of the 300 children he asked to draw a picture of God ‘‘drew
pictures of His face’’ (p. 40). When Coles inquired of one sixth-grader,
‘‘ ‘Would you want to go beyond the face?’ . . . There was a pause, and no
response.’’ A moment later, writes the author, ‘‘I spelled out the question:
‘Would you want to draw the body?’ ‘No.’ Another pause and then: ‘I don’t
think of God except for His face; I mean, when I picture Him, it’s His face’ ’’
(pp. 40–41). Even children ‘‘who have pictured Jesus as a man and have seen
Him pictured—walking, talking, eating with His friends and followers,’’
Coles tells us, ‘‘are often reluctant to go beyond the representation of God’s
face’’ (p. 41). The faces of God created by Cole’s subjects mirror those
subjects’ genetical background: white children drew Caucasian faces; black
children drew negroid faces (p. 44). One child declares,
When I look up to God, I think of Him looking down on me. . . . It’s His eyes
that are real special, I’m sure. I mean, He’s as special as you can be, but it’s the
eyes that He uses, to see all of us down here! . . . That’s all I see, His eyes mainly
and His forehead, I guess. . . . He’s looking down and I pray He’ll smile on us.
(p. 52)
Interestingly, one participant who pictures God’s face in his mind wonders
about the face of the ‘‘ ‘Holy Ghost’ ’’: ‘‘ ‘I never figured It had a face’ ’’
(p. 63). For Coles, all of this material taken together reflects the principal rea-
son people (Christians) turn to God or come to ‘‘believe in God’’ in the first
place (p. 6). Following D. W. Winnicott and Ana-Maria Rizzuto, Coles sug-
gests that people long for a God who can watch over them, assist them, succor
them, listen to them when they pray or cry out—in a word, love them. Coles
writes (and we must keep God’s face in mind here), ‘‘a baby uses its eyes’’ in
relation to its ‘‘longings,’’ and ‘‘we adults, babes in the woods of a universe
whose enormity and mystery and frustrations are only too obvious, do like-
wise.’’ Shall we look again at George A. Buttrick’s revelational comment cited
in Chapter 3, Part One in our analysis of prayer? ‘‘God will be found,’’
declares Buttrick, ‘‘by a response in prayer’’ to ‘‘One of whom we are dimly
aware—as a child, half waking, responds to the mother who bends over
him.’’32 This is what it means at the deepest memorial, psychological, emo-
tional level when Coles’s young subjects declare the hope that God’s face,
when they behold it in their minds, will be smiling down upon them.
The upshot is apparent: to comprehend Guardini’s observation that ‘‘God
has no face as we understand it,’’ we must understand the ubiquitous longing
among Christians to ‘‘see the face of God’’ in the full context of Christianity’s
infantilizing agenda, of baptism in which Christ’s followers or trackers become
His ‘‘little children’’; of the Eucharist in which the faithful are fed by and feed
on their Vine, their ultimate source of nourishment, of life itself; of prayer in
which the supplicator approaches his Lord as an utterly helpless little one
permanently submitting to the will of his omnipotent Father; of moment-to-

moment dependency in which the believer continuously acknowledges his
ever-present, urgent need for his heavenly Creator’s support; of the pastoral
metaphor in which the worshiper’s felicitous destiny is to follow his Creator
to green pastures, to still waters, through the valley of the shadow of death,
and finally to his permanent home, namely, the body of Jesus Christ.
The Almighty’s face is at the center of the creed because the parental face
during the early time is the little one’s chief tracking device, the little one’s
chief map of the world to which for years he emotionally, psychologically,
and neurologically devotes himself in his life-or-death effort to survive and
adapt to the environment in which, willy-nilly, he suddenly discovers himself.
As this face is gradually taken away, as this initial map or tracking device is
removed through the process of biological separation from the matrix, the
human creature searches for ways to get it back again, to restore his connec-
tion to the big one upon whom he depended overwhelmingly for his environ-
mental adaptation and survival. The whole of Christianity in its infantilizing
process is devoted to precisely this magical, homeopathic, or imitative accom-
plishment. Accordingly, the ubiquitous reference to God’s face in Christianity
is designed to arouse an implicit recollection of the early period and through
such a recollection to awaken the Comforter, the Holy Spirit from Whom
emanates inwardly the original, primal symbiosis, the original, primal connec-
tion through which the ‘‘little child’’ gained his feeling of security and well-
being. God ‘‘has no face as we understand it’’ until we perceive God’s face
as the magical recreation of a relationship in which the human creature
thrived and luxuriated as he strove to flourish in the world of his ‘‘creation,’’
the first world, the first map, the first environment in which he endeavored
to find his way. The face of the Almighty for the grown-up, practicing Chris-
tian ultimately emerges from the early, foundational synapses of his cease-
lessly developing brain. Primal and primitive and emotionally magnetic, it
begins to take shape as the nursing infant locks his eyes on the face of his
empathetic provider, as he notes the caregiver’s visage appearing above the
edge of his crib or his playpen, as he opens his mouth in his high chair to
receive another spoonful of plums from his nourisher, his adored and adoring
parental presence. Over and over again, thousands upon thousands of times
during the early period, the little one looks into the empathetic face of
the big one, and the big one looks back. Over and over again the child inter-
nalizes into his brain this countenance, this face, as the bedrock of his own
emerging identity, his trust in life, his very selfhood.
Permit me to recall a few points from this book’s theoretical sections.
The genesis and the formation of the self derive from the initial mirroring
experience with the mother. For several decades this unique, remarkable
aspect of our origins has been studied intensively by observers within the
psychological/neurological community and has come to be regarded gener-
ally as a central structural occurrence of our normal development.
And inborn tendency on the part of the infant prompts him to seek out his
mother’s gaze and to do so regularly and for extended periods. The mother
sets about exploiting this mutual fact-gazing activity. As eye-to-eye contact
becomes frequent, and easily observed by the investigator, the mother’s con-
tinual inclination to change her facial expression, as well as the quality of
her vocalizing, emerges with striking clarity. Usually she smiles, and nods,
and coos; sometimes in response to an infant frown, she frowns. In virtually
every instance, the mother’s facial and vocal behavior comprises an imitation
of the baby’s. Accordingly, as the mother descends to the infant’s level, she
provides him or her with a particular kind of human mirror. She does not
simply give the baby back his or her own self; she reinforces a portion of
the baby’s behavior in comparison with another portion. She gives the baby
back not merely a part of what he or she is doing, but, in addition, something
of her own. As Winnicott expresses the matter, ‘‘In individual . . . develop-
ment the precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face.’’33 Of particular interest
in this connection is Winnicott’s answer to his own question, ‘‘What does
the baby see when he or she looks at the mother’s face’’ (p. 112)? He writes,
‘‘I am suggesting that, ordinarily, what the baby sees is himself or herself.’’
In other words, the mother is looking at the baby and what she looks like is
related to what she sees there (p. 112). Thus, the process that engenders one’s
selfhood appears to go, once again in Winnicott’s aphoristic style, ‘‘when I
look I am seen, so I exist’’ (p. 114). Have we a variation upon the cogito here?
‘‘I was seen, therefore I am’’? Is it possible that René Descartes missed, in his
notorious monistic formulation, the empathetic, relational origin of his and
everyone else’s existence? The point is, when one discovers God’s face in the
Christian realm, one discovers it as an extension of the caregiver one has seen
and loved during the course of one’s early experience, just as we have it in
Coles. This is the personal, individual, subjective core of Christianity, and
as the core it can never be sundered from the theology, no matter how sophis-
ticated the theology may get. The Christian religion cannot be broken up, let
alone gutted of its emotional foundation. The face of God is there for those
who believe because the face of God is the implicit recollection of the loving
parental provider, otherwise known as the ‘‘Holy Spirit.’’
We’re reaching a perspective, now, from which we can appreciate the full
psychological quality, the full psychological tenor of the Christian’s all-
consuming wish to behold the face of his God, the face of his Deity Who
according to the experts doesn’t have a face as we understand it ordinarily.34

Listen to Tim Stafford as he excitedly pursues the possibilities in his volume
Knowing the Face of God. ‘‘For us as human beings of God’s creation,’’
he writes,
full personal intimacy comes when we are able not merely to talk, but to see face
to face. . . . John, who twice says that no one has ever seen God, also says this:
‘‘Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet
been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him,
for we shall see Him as He is’’ (I John 3:2). And, says John, ‘‘His servants
will . . . see His face’’ (Revelation 22:4). Paul ultimately foresees prophecies,
tongues, and knowledge passing away. But the image of a face does not pass
away. ‘‘Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know
fully, even as I am fully known’’ (I Corinthians 13:9–12). When the Bible
speaks of the new age when we will be fully satisfied, when we will be intimate
with God in a way that no one on earth has ever experienced, it speaks this
way—in terms of seeing God’s face.35
Stafford continues,
What this means I confess I do not know; I am not convinced that anyone
knows. Our metaphysical speculations are likely to carry little weight at the
time when God clears up our confusion. . . . We must be transformed to see,
and we will only be so transformed in the very act of seeing. Yet we have been
told about it in advance. That is the crucial point, focusing our longing for
God in the right direction. We hunger to know God personally, not merely to
talk about Him but to experience Him as a living character. He is our father:
we long to feel His arms. He has broken down all barriers to love us; we hunger to
be in His possession. This hope drives us on, and it also frustrates us because
we get only glimmers, nothing solid. . . . I believe this longing can only be fulfilled
when our eyes are opened on the loving and glorious face of God. Such will someday
be our joy.
(p. 183, my emphasis)
And finally from Stafford,
If Moses could not see what he wanted, if Paul and John admitted their global
ignorance of the wonderful light to come, then we should not be too surprised
at our own sense of incompleteness. Our longing, even our frustration, is nothing
to be ashamed of. . . . We long to know Him completely because we have come
to know Him in part. Now that we have come to know Him, nothing will satisfy
but the sight of His face. . . . We are not condemned to endless searching. God will
find us. He will not always be beyond our sight. He will look into our eyes, and
all the frustrating limits will be purified out of us just by the searching of those eyes.
It will be more than we dreamed of, more than we longed for.
Christianity’s primal cravings reverberate throughout these remarkable,

representative passages.
Stafford ‘‘longs to feel’’ God’s ‘‘arms’’ around him, longs to experience
God’s ‘‘intimacy’’ and ‘‘love,’’ longs to be in the Almighty’s ‘‘possession,’’ to
belong to Him symbiotically just as the little one belongs in the most inti-
mate, loving way to the big one who watches over him. Driven by such
‘‘hope,’’ Stafford is also ‘‘frustrated’’ by its truncation, by his sense of ‘‘incom-
pleteness’’ (his most revealing word) that signifies, of course, his sense of
separation from the matrix, his sense of being out there on his own, a ‘‘babe,’’
as Coles expressed it, lost in the ‘‘woods’’ of an enormous, frustrating ‘‘uni-
verse.’’ And speaking of Coles, can anyone miss the connection between the
youngster in Coles’s book who comments on the face and eyes of God and
the passage from Stafford just cited? First the youngster:
Everyone is special in God’s eyes. It’s His eyes that are real special, I’m sure. I
mean He’s as special as you can be, but it’s the eyes that He uses to see all of us
down here! . . . I’ll pray to God and I’ll think of Him, and then I’ll see Him,
His face, His eyes. That’s all I see, His eyes, mainly, and His forehead, I guess,
and His hair, not much else. He’s looking down, and I pray He’ll smile on us.
(Coles, p. 52)
Now Stafford:
We are not condemned to endless searching; God will find us. He will not
always be beyond our sight. He will look into our eyes, and all the frustrating
limits will be purified out of us just by the searching of those eyes. It will be
more than we dreamed of, more than we longed for.
(Stafford, p. 184)
Both Coles’s youthful subject and author Stafford are now separated from the
matrix, from the original and originative big one who lovingly nurtured them
into human life and selfhood as we ordinarily employ those terms. Coles’s
subject is now separate as a child in actuality, while Stafford, a grown-up, is
separated as a ‘‘little child’’ (Matt. 18:3) through Christianity’s infantilizing
process. Both are in search of mnemonic cues that will awaken within them
the loving ministrations of the caregiver, the loving symbiotic attachments
and interfusions of the early period that, in their implicit, feeling recollection,
are officially designated by the creed as the ‘‘Holy Spirit.’’ For both the boy
and the man, the notion of God’s ‘‘face’’ is paramount among just such mne-
monic cues. We no longer have to scratch our heads over this putative ‘‘spir-
itual mystery.’’ The psychological/neurological provenance of what is
occurring here is unmistakable. Where would the eyes of this otherworldly
and explicitly parental face have come from in this Christian context of long-
ing for the Big One, for union as opposed to separation (‘‘God will find us’’),
for the Parent-Deity whose presence makes one feel, at last, complete if not
from our own biological lives as those lives took shape in and through the
mutual face-gazing activity of our opening years? Alluding to the gift of
God’s love, God Speaks: Devotional advises its readers to ‘‘open the door of
your heart today. Look up into God’s loving face and smile at this blessing.
Then close your eyes and imagine Him smiling back at you. God loves
you!’’36 Here is the mnemonic, relational essence of the Christian faith.
Precisely this significance, this inner meaning, is available to us here as we
note Thomas Merton’s insistence that the cardinal aim of the Christian
‘‘mind’’ is ‘‘to see the face of its Creator.’’37 It is available to us as we read Basil
Hume’s supplication (based on Psalm 27), ‘‘It is your face, Lord, that I seek.
Hide not your face,’’38 as we imagine the church choir singing of its wish to
‘‘see the sweet compassion’’ of ‘‘God’s face,’’39 as we peruse Saint Augustine’s
declaration, ‘‘Thy face, Lord, will I seek. . . . The darkness of affection is the
real distance from Thy face,’’40 or as we listen to the all-male quartet on the
Trinity Broadcasting Network warbling harmoniously,
Lord, don’t hide your face from me.

Take my hand and let me stand
Where no one stands alone.
Lord, don’t hide your face from me.41
For the Christian who manages through the Holy Spirit to ‘‘behold the face
of God,’’ presumably on a regular basis, separation is over. The memorial
magic has worked. The worshiper will never again have to ‘‘stand alone.’’
God’s ‘‘compassion’’ will belong to him forever. He will be in, symbiotically
in, the gravitational orbit of the Big One, face to face with his heavenly Lord.
It can hardly come as a surprise to learn at this juncture that Christianity’s
infantilizing process plays upon both our primal longings and fears by meta-
phorically equating the presence of God’s ‘‘face’’ with light and the absence
of God’s ‘‘face’’ with darkness. To be out of the symbiotic orbit of mutual face
gazing, in short, is to be lost in the dark. We’ve already had a sample of this
through Augustine’s declaration that to be in the ‘‘darkness’’ of fleshly
thoughts and deeds is to be ‘‘far’’ from the ‘‘face’’ of the Lord.42 The connec-
tion of the Almighty’s countenance to the light derives principally from the
Psalms where we find ‘‘Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy
Throne: mercy and truth shall go before Thy face. Blessed is the people that
know the joyful sound: They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy counte-
nance’’ (Ps. 89:14–15). And again, ‘‘Make thy face to shine upon thy servant;
save me for thy mercies’ sake’’ (Ps. 31:16). And finally, ‘‘Turn us again,
O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved’’ (Ps. 80:3).
(We must note here that the longing for God’s ‘‘face’’ to ‘‘shine’’ already holds
by implication the suggestion of darkness, or shining’s opposite.) For God to
‘‘hide’’ His ‘‘face,’’ to turn away from His servants, to ‘‘cast off ’’ their ‘‘souls,’’
is to leave them ‘‘in the dark,’’ to prevent them from ‘‘knowing’’ His ‘‘right-
eousness’’ and His ‘‘wonder’’ (Ps. 88:12–15). In the eye of the Christian, of
course, it is Jesus Himself Who embodies the ‘‘light’’ of ‘‘the world’’
(John 12:46). To follow Him is to live in the light; to reject Him is to reside
in the darkness: ‘‘I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth
on me should not abide in the darkness’’ (John 12:46). And again,
Then Jesus said to them, yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye
have the light, lest darkness come upon you; for he that walketh in darkness
knoweth not wither he goest. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye
may be the children of light. These things spoke Jesus, and departed, and did
hide himself from them.
(John 12: 35–36, my emphasis)
(Note the reference to Jesus’s followers as ‘‘children’’ and the link to the
Psalms through the notion of ‘‘hiding.’’) Everywhere in the teachings and
traditions of the creed we find this dichotomy underscored, with an emphasis
on the ‘‘child’’ or the ‘‘children.’’ Writes Saint Paul in his Epistle to the
Ephesians, ‘‘For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the
Lord; walk as children of light’’ (5:8). Prays Anderson in his volume Who I
Am in Christ,
Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for rescuing me from the domain of darkness.
Because of your great grace, I announce that I am no longer a child of darkness
but a child of light, and I choose to walk in the light and ask that you would
enable me to do so.43
Note this remarkable passage from God Speaks: Devotional that makes per-
fectly clear the manner in which Christianity employs this theme as part of
the infantilizing process, including the face of the Lord, indeed the very eyes
of the Lord, watching over His little boys and girls, just as ‘‘Mom and
Dad’’ do:
Almost every kid has experienced the excitement and intrigue of a backyard
camp out. . . . If you’ve been on one of these daring adventures, you know the
one thing no one counts on is the darkness. The trees in the yard, so innocent
by day, cast menacing shadows at night. Unfamiliar sounds, impossible to iden-
tify in the dark, begin to wear away at your resolve. The whole thing starts to
feel pretty scary. Just when you’re about to bolt for the house, you look up
and see Mom and Dad watching from the window, ready to rescue you at a
moment’s notice. The world can be a dark, scary place. It can cast long, menac-
ing shadows over our lives that leave us feeling alone and fearful. That’s when
we need to look up and see our heavenly Father watching, ready to chase away
our fears and give us the courage to make it through the night.44
God Speaks: Devotional concludes the passage with these words from
I Pet. 3:12, ‘‘The Lord is watching His children.’’ Surely the psychological/
neurological significance of all this is apparent.
Just as the presence of God’s ‘‘face’’ mnemonically awakens the symbiotic
interaction of the early period, the mutual face-gazing activity through which
the little one finds his ‘‘map,’’ his direction, his security in the environment in
which he discovers himself, so does the absence of God’s ‘‘face,’’ the ‘‘hiding’’
of God’s ‘‘face,’’ the notion of the Big One leaving his children ‘‘in the dark’’
(Ps. 88:12) awaken the primal anxiety of the opening years, the fear of sep-
aration, the inward desolation of the ‘‘little child’’ when no one is there, when
he’s on his own. Christianity’s infantilizing magic operates vigorously from
both sides of the ‘‘facial’’ dichotomy, the presence of God’s ‘‘face’’ calling up
the Holy Spirit, or the conviction of the truth of the creed, the absence of
God’s ‘‘face’’ arousing elemental fears and through such painful arousal the
desire to join in with the flock, to track after the Shepherd, to enter the body
of Christ, the orbit of the Almighty’s gravitational power. As that grand old
American hymn O God, I Cried, No Dark Disguise has it, ‘‘The soul can split
the sky in two/And let the face of God shine through.’’45 It is time now to
reject both sides of the ‘‘facial’’ dichotomy, to say no to both the infantilizing
longings and the infantilizing fears, to grow up, indeed to face up to the real-
ities of our separateness, our smallness in the immensity of the cosmos, and
our own temporal, transient, mortal natures. No matter what the adapta-
tional benefits of Christianity’s magical procedures may be, the price we pay
for them in the distortion of our basic perception of the world around us is
too high. To put it somewhat differently, it is time now to say ‘‘Boo!’’ boo
to the mysterious faces and spirits and ghosts and presences, boo to all the
denizens of the putative supernatural realm, boo to every thing, including the
‘‘darkness,’’ that would lead us away from the light of our reason, our ration-
ality, our empiricism, our skepticism in the face of extraordinary claims—in
short, our trust in our own down-to-earth perceptions as we experience them,
and critically examine them, each and every worthwhile day of our lives.
Speaking in Tongues: Origins of the Holy Spirit

Nothing discloses Christianity’s primitive, magical nature more vividly
than the burgeoning Pentecostal movement and the rite by which it is known,
namely, speaking in tongues, or as it is alternatively called, glossolalia. Here is
Webster’s definition, which may help to give the reader some idea of the
behavior in question: ‘‘speaking in tongues: a form of glossolalia in which a
person experiencing religious ecstasy utters incomprehensible sounds that
the speaker believes are a language spoken through him or her by a deity.’’46
For glossolalia Webster has ‘‘incomprehensible speech in an imaginary
language, sometimes occurring in a trance state, an episode of religious
ecstacy.’’47 Also for glossolalia, Webster suggests the reader take a look at the
definitions for the word ‘‘schizophrenia.’’ Of particular significance for our
discussion here is the inextricable connection between speaking in tongues
and descent of the Holy Spirit into the minds and hearts of the Apostles.
We’ve been discussing and alluding to the Holy Spirit for many pages in an
attempt to demonstrate the manner in which credence or conviction suffuses
the worshiper through the arousal of his deep, implicit recollection of the
period during which he existed as a ‘‘little child’’ in the care of a big one, cher-
ished, secure, following after the parental guide, feeding by means of parental
provision, and taking the whole pattern into his developing mind-brain, for
years, as a helpless, dependent newcomer to the world. It is no coincidence,
we’ve suggested, that the Holy Spirit comes to the individual practitioner at
the time of his baptism, the time at which he is ritually born again as the ‘‘little
child’’ of Jesus Christ toward Whom he must now look for everything, his life
(Jesus as Vine), his guidance upon the earth (Jesus as Shepherd), and his eternal
salvation (Jesus as the vanquisher of death, the ultimate separation). Not only
must the practitioner do ‘‘whatsoever’’ Jesus tells him to do (John 15:14), he
must love his Savior more than he loves his own biological parents. He must
become, centrally, a child of the Lord. We recognize immediately the neuro-
logical/psychological potential of such doctrines to reevoke the actual biological
infancy and childhood of the worshiper, to conjure up, as it were, the infantile
model of his own original experience: the Christian can’t explicitly recall the
early period but he can feel it reverberating compellingly below the surface of
his consciousness such that Christianity’s mirror-like version of those

early interactional events resonates inwardly as true. The result is twofold:
heartfelt conviction, frequently joyous or ecstatic because the believer or
convert feels once again secure and unconditionally loved; and a sensation
of the mysterious divine because the actual source or causation of the change
is concealed forever in the realm of infantile amnesia, disclosed yet hidden,
manifest yet unseen, powerfully and explicitly directive or intentional, yet
powerfully and implicitly suggestive. Does not the Lord work in mysterious
ways? Accordingly, if baptism and the Holy Spirit require correlation as
marking the commencement of Christianity’s infantilizing process, so glosso-
lalia and the Holy Spirit require similar treatment as marking the Holy
Spirit’s entry into the proselytizers, the Apostles, whose mission is to generate
the creed, to bring Christ’s parentage and Christ’s doctrine to everyone on the
planet. Those who have become ‘‘little children’’ themselves will now go
about finding more potential ‘‘little children’’ to swell the flock, the followers
or trackers of the sacred Shepherd Whose map will lead everyone home to the
sheepfold.
The Scriptural foundation and inspiration for the phenomenon of speak-
ing in tongues derives from the New Testament, specifically the Acts of the
Apostles:
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they [the Apostles] were all with
one accord in one place.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind,
and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
And then appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon
each of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other
tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation
under heaven.
Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were
confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.
And they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, Behold, are
not all these which speak Galilaeans?
And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?
Parthians and Medes, . . . Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our
tongues the wonderful works of God. . . .
Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said unto them . . .
this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;
And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my
Spirit upon all flesh; . . .
And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord
shall be saved.
(Acts 2:1–21)
Thus, 50 days after the resurrection of Christ (from the Greek pentekoste, lit-
erally 50th day) the Apostles receive from the Holy Spirit both the linguistic
means and the inner resolve to go out into the world and preach the Gospel.
What does this material signify from a naturalistic or realistic angle? We will
never know, of course. In all likelihood, we have a tendentious, Scriptural
rendering of some sort of hallucinatory, cultic contagion (or ‘‘enthusiasm’’)
that transpired among Jesus’s early followers as Christianity began to insert
itself into the surrounding culture.
As for the Pentecostal movement transpiring around us today, it com-
menced toward the turn of the twentieth century, as follows (note the linkage
between rebirth and the Holy Spirit): ‘‘On New Year’s Day 1901 in Topeka,
Kansas,’’ write Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman,
a young woman named Agnes Ozman, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, was
about to be transported to a strange wondrous place—not by a tornado, but
through a born-again experience. She asked her teacher, Charles Parham, to
lay his hands on her and pray, and when he did, she began to speak in a lan-
guage no one had ever heard before. Some of the Bible students thought she
was babbling, and others thought she was speaking Chinese, but they all agreed
that she had been touched by the Holy Spirit and given the gift of ‘‘speaking in
tongues.’’ On that day was born the Pentecostal movement.48
The extent of the ‘‘movement’s’’ current popularity and influence must not be
underestimated. As a ‘‘spiritual’’ activity, glossolalia is reaching into all the major
denominations of the creed, with millions of devotees either engaged directly or
bearing pious, devotional witness to the practice. According to a recent Pew
Forum poll, Pentecostalists (or ‘‘charismatics’’ or ‘‘renewalists’’ as they are also
called) ‘‘are the fastest-growing religious group, approximately one-fourth of
the world’s two billion Christians,’’ including approximately 23 percent of
Christian Americans.49 Since the 1960s, the movement has leapt from tradi-
tional Pentecostal denominations ‘‘to mainline Protestant and Catholic congre-
gations. There are tongue-speaking Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians,
and Catholics’’ (p. 9d). There are, of course, dissenters, too, Christians who
deem speaking in tongues ‘‘phony, weird, or even dangerous’’ (p. 9d); but at
the moment, it seems, nothing is able to markedly diminish the enthusiasm.
The ‘‘gift of tongues,’’ writes Terry R. Baughman, pastor of The Pentecostals
of Pleasanton (California), ‘‘is evidence of the spirit of God within us. . . .
We see it as filling a God-shaped hole in the heart of man’’ (p. 9d). In other
words, to develop the pastor’s metaphor, the whole business is related primarily
to ‘‘man’s’’ longing for emotional fulfillment, emotional connectedness, through
some kind of merger or union with the Deity, a ‘‘spiritual’’ behavior that will fill
the practitioner with the Godhead, end the separation, the loneliness, and the
longing that comes inevitably to the human creature as he finds himself out there
on his own as opposed to in there with the Big One.
What happens exactly, or perhaps one should say outwardly, when
a speaker in tongues manifests his gift, his supernatural visitation from
the Holy Spirit? We’ve had a brief taste of this already from Newberg and
Waldman; here is further material from their text:
What . . . is speaking in tongues? What does it sound like, and what does it
mean? Even though the practice was widespread in the first half of the twentieth
century, very few researchers took a strong interest in it, and not until 1977 did
an ethnomusicologist, Jeff Titon, make a recording of this remarkable speech
during a Pentecostal revival meeting. The following glossolalic passage, spelled
out phonetically, was made from that recording (the phonetic symbol ‘‘?’’ refers
to a guttural sound made in the back of the esophagus):
Kantasaborovo santolavo ilamasax rabaxo kalarabou. risadalabo pita
rebasa toyen santoraba satrobaho satoya. rika salara santo labor ‘‘?’’ bokoli
risantobo santayabadiante ikolorosi balso kolorianti
In the early years of the apostolic faith missions, their publications often
claimed that parishioners spoke in foreign languages that these people had never
learned [thus echoing the New Testament]. Researchers call this form of
tongue-speaking xenolalia or xenoglossia; but over the years, as linguists dis-
proved such claims, belief in xenolalia died out. Instead, parishoners came to
believe that glossolalics were speaking the language of God.
(pp. 194–95)
Finally, assert Newberg and Waldman,
Researchers who have studied glossolalia have not found linguistic evidence that
any form of language is being spoken. Rather, the person is loosely stringing
together and repeating familiar phonetic sounds. Nevertheless, in some
churches, ministers and parishioners claim to be able to interpret the utterances,
though in other groups it is only the speaker who privately intuits the meaning.
(p. 195)
Here is another example, along with important commentary, from John P.

Kildahl’s volume The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues:
Standing at her sink, washing the breakfast dishes, Mrs. Rogers spoke out loud.
She said, ‘‘Jana, Kanna, saree saree Kanai, Katai, akanna Kanai Karai Yahai,
of saramai, saramoyai, iana Kanna.’’ Mrs. Rogers was speaking in tongues—
technically called glossolalia. She did not know what the words meant, but
she felt a quiet contentment as she talked and sung the strange syllables. Some
days she spoke only a word or two in this way before she changed to English,
but that morning, she uttered the rhythmic sounds for about ten minutes and
stopped only when she had finishing scouring . . . the frying pan. . . . Speaking
in tongues still seemed strange to Mrs. Rogers, though she had been doing it
for more than a year. She felt as if she had been given the ability to speak in a
new language, without having to trouble too much about what the words
actually meant. It was a pleasant, effortless thing to do and often filled her with
a sense of well-being.50
It does not matter, then, whether or not the glossolalist is alone or in a group
of fellow glossolalists, or in or out of a church setting.
He can speak in tongues while driving a car or swimming. He can do it silently

in the midst of a party, or aloud before a large audience. The experience brings
peace and joy and inner harmony. Glossolalists view it as an answer to prayer,
an assurance of divine love and acceptance.
(p. 4)
Let’s begin to develop this last aspect of the behavior, I mean the psychologi-
cal/neurological direction from which feelings of ‘‘love’’ and ‘‘acceptance’’
well up in the glossolalist as he pronounces his nonsensical syllables.
We must bear in mind firmly as we go that the glossolalists with whom we
are dealing are invariably Christians, which is to say individuals who have
already undergone Christianity’s infantilizing process, who regard themselves
as the Almighty’s ‘‘little children,’’ who depend on their Shepherd/Savior for
guidance, for sustenance, for protection, for affection—for everything they
require as needful, vulnerable denizens of the planet. To put it another way,
we must realize as we proceed that our glossolalists, our speakers, are looking
to enhance their personal relationship with the Deity as it has been, and is,
presented to them doctrinally by the overall magical formulations of the
creed. As one of the glossolalists in Kildahl declares when asked what his
activity has accomplished for him,
My life is radically changed as a result of this experience—a development quite

to be expected [by a Christian] after a direct and personal encounter with the
Holy Spirit. I know this from experience and so does every other child of God
[every other Christian] who belongs to Him. Our speaking in tongues is our
seal to prove we belong to Him. Christ is alive in us. He leads and guides. . . .
He pulls us back from danger and covers us from unknown danger.
(p. 8, my emphasis)
We’ve heard all this before, of course, and may think of it as the Christian
condition: the speaker of the magical words is God’s ‘‘child’’; he ‘‘belongs’’ to
the Deity as the little one belongs to the parent; he perceives another being,
namely, Christ, ‘‘alive’’ in him, which means he perceives himself united with,
merged with, the Big One symbiotically such that he ‘‘walks’’ and ‘‘talks’’ with
another, supernatural entity (or internalized object, in psychological terms)
who ‘‘leads’’ him, ‘‘guides’’ him (the pastoral metaphor), protects him from
danger, indeed covers him up (the umbilical cocoon) from the anxiety-
inducing future of ‘‘unknown’’ threats. The aim of glossolalia, then, is to
intensify, to deepen the orthodox, infantilizing agenda of the Christian reli-
gion, and our business here is to understand in at least a preliminary way just
how such a deepening comes about.
A significant clue emerges as we observe investigators underscoring the
similarities between the glossolalist’s productions and the babbling of infants
and small children. ‘‘What some authorities call ‘infantile babble,’ ’’ writes
Kildahl, ‘‘is more scientifically described as similar to the second or parataxic
phase of an infant’s attempts to communicate. During this period the toddler
repeats sounds which are meaningless to the listener but satisfying to the
child. Another speech pattern typical of this level of development,’’ Kildahl
goes on,
involves dual or collective monologues (Piaget). The youngster still does not
make sense of his speech, but is stimulated by the presence of another person
or persons who are not included in the monologue or expected to respond to
it. Wayne E. Oates believes that this accurately describes the phenomenon of
glossolalia. The distortions of speech which appear at the time are submerged
by the child as he matures. According to Oates, these distortions reappear in
tongue-speaking.
(pp. 31–32)
Also significant is the section in Newberg and Waldman titled ‘‘The Pen-
tecostal Brain in Action’’ (p. 197), wherein we discover at the experimental,
clinical level that speaking in tongues triggers a decrease in the activity of the
frontal lobes (p. 200). ‘‘This is a very unusual finding,’’ according to these
authors, because the language that arises from the ‘‘glossolalic state’’ is always
‘‘highly structured’’ and ‘‘filled with clearly articulated phrases’’ (p. 200).
Apparently, they contend, the language of the tongue-speaker is ‘‘being
generated in a different way,’’ or ‘‘from someplace other than the normal

processing centers of speech,’’ as a kind of ‘‘incomplete speech’’ (p. 201).
We’re close, now, to the heart of the matter.
‘‘When speaking in tongues,’’ explain Newberg and Waldman,
practitioners describe the experience as surrendering themselves to the spirit of

God. In this sense, they are no longer attempting to control their thoughts, feel-
ings, or bodily movements; such control is primarily a frontal lobe function.
They are also deliberately suspending cognitive processes that are normally
active in maintaining focused attention and awareness. In essence, they are
surrendering their conscious will.
(p. 201)
With ‘‘decreased activity in your frontal lobes,’’ Newberg and Waldman con-
tinue, ‘‘you would have the conscious experience that ‘something else’ was
running the show.’’ Even ‘‘glossolalic people who were trained to speak a
pseudo language also had the sense that they were being overtaken by an out-
side or foreign source’’ (p. 201). Accordingly, if the ‘‘goal’’ of the ‘‘Pentecostal
tradition’’ is to ‘‘be transformed’’ through a ‘‘new religious experience’’ as
Newberg and Waldman contend (p. 202), we may clearly perceive the
psychological/neurological direction from which the ‘‘transformation’’ occurs
by simply linking together the transformation’s principal ingredients, namely,
(1) infantile or child-like babbling, (2) decreased activity in the frontal lobes
(decreased cognition), and (3) the sense of being ‘‘overtaken’’ (taken over) by
an ‘‘outside’’ or ‘‘foreign’’ source. When all of this successfully transpires, in
other words, when the speaker in tongues succeeds in imitating (homeopathic
magic) the original relationship between the helpless, babbling, dependent
little one and the all-controlling, all-directing, parental Deity, the infantiliz-
ing conduct arouses the cerebrally rooted, implicit recollection of the period
during which the arrangement actually obtained. This is an arousal that
Pentecostal Christianity invariably celebrates as confirmational, faith-bound
visitation from the mysterious Holy Spirit (the ‘‘religious experience’’) Who
just happens to be doctrinally not merely a spirit but a person, too. We may
recall here, following Henry Cloud and John Townsend, that Christianity’s
deepest aim, deepest purpose, is to foster in the practitioner a ‘‘moment-to-
moment relationship of dependency’’ between the worshiper and his loving
Lord, Jesus Christ, and that it is the Holy Spirit specifically Who prompts
the worshiper to ‘‘yield and follow,’’ to permit the Deity to ‘‘control’’ and
‘‘guide’’ him throughout the course of his earthly existence.51 Can one think
of a better way to accomplish this orthodox purpose, startling as it is,
than to babble like an infant, to inhibit the directional influence of one’s
‘‘frontal lobes,’’ and to consider oneself usurped by a ‘‘foreign source,’’ or more

specifically, by an omnipotent Parent-God?
In a section titled ‘‘The Dependency Syndrome,’’ Kildahl points out that
‘‘tongue-speakers’’ in a group or congregational setting have ‘‘a strong need
for external guidance’’ from a ‘‘trusted’’ figure of ‘‘authority,’’ ‘‘a strong sense
of leaning on someone more powerful than themselves,’’ who gives them a
sense of ‘‘security and direction in their lives’’ (the essentials of the pastoral
metaphor). Followers feel ‘‘at peace,’’ declares Kildahl, because they’ve
‘‘abandoned’’ themselves to the ‘‘control of someone else’’ (p. 51). Kildahl
continues in a decisive utterance:
A little girl walking down the street holding her daddy’s hand feels serene and
safe in a unique way. She holds his big, strong hand, and she rests joyfully in
the belief that nothing can happen that her daddy cannot handle. She feels
loved and she feels protected. Our research gave evidence that the believing
tongue-speaker approaches this same feeling of euphoria. He believes that he is
in the hands of God. He believes that he has proof of it because he can speak
in tongues.
Glossolalia, then, constitutes ‘‘a reversion to an early level of maturity’’ during

which the ‘‘rational way’’ of ‘‘relating to life’’ is ‘‘diminished.’’ It is ‘‘more
child-like’’ and ‘‘less critical’’ in ‘‘its nature’’ (p. 59). As for glossolalia’s ‘‘mag-
ical quality,’’ or the quality that aligns it with the other infantilizing facets of
Christianity, it emerges unforgettably as Kildahl’s study presents the glossolal-
ist (1) crying out in prayer, ‘‘God, make me a puppet,’’ as if the practitioner
‘‘believed almost literally that God would pull the strings and he as a puppet
would respond’’ (p. 61), (2) declaring openly, ‘‘God now directs my tongue’’
and ‘‘He allows me to make these sounds’’ (p. 61), (3) asserting that God is
actually ‘‘making his tongue move’’ (p. 61), or (4) claiming that his
‘‘tongue-speaking is caused by direct mechanical movement of the vocal
chords by the Holy Spirit’’ (p. 71). As is always the case with Christianity’s
infantilizing doctrines and practices, the overarching psychological feature
of all these astonishing utterances turns out to be the worshiper’s eagerness
to place himself in the gravitational field of the Big One’s will, the Big One’s
control, which is to say, to re-create on the level of homeopathic magic the pri-
mal symbiotic interaction of the early time. The Holy Spirit enters upon the
scene, or surges up within the emotional perceptions of the worshiper, when
and only when such magical conduct awakens at the level of implicit recollec-
tion the actual biological substrate that underlies the whole of Christianity’s
magical goings-on. ‘‘The brain works by pattern matching, not by logic,’’
Professor Jonathan Haidt reminds us,52 as we explore the glossolalic world in

which the pattern of infantile dependency and submission matches precisely
the strange religious behavior we’re exploring.
It will come as no surprise, we might add, that a ‘‘personal crisis of
some kind’’ frequently precedes the Christian’s initiation into the world of
glossolalia where he may not only render himself up to the care and guidance
of the supernatural Big One to Whose will he now utterly submits, but feel
himself surrounded by other tongue-speakers with whom he shares both a
mysterious gift and a sympathetic, reliable, social interaction. Pentecostals,
notes Kildahl, ‘‘are often members of the affluent middle class, professionals
or quasi-professionals suffering from the emotional deprivation common to
our times. Sometimes individuals of this socio-economic level try to ‘break
through’ their loneliness by means of alcohol or drugs.’’ Speaking in tongues
‘‘provides a form of breaking through which allows the psychically ill to com-
municate their deep and too-long-repressed religious emotions in a socially
acceptable form’’ (p. 33). This final point returns me to the theme I under-
took at the conclusion of the previous section on the significance of the
Godhead’s face.
Extreme though it may be in its expressional features, speaking in tongues
as we observe it today among burgeoning Pentecostal (and other) congrega-
tions harbors in its core the same infantilizing purpose that resides at the bed-
rock of the Christian faith as a whole. Accordingly, we have the analytical
right to say, or to think to ourselves, here is Christianity; here is the Christian
religion in all its magical splendor. What do we find in the studies we’ve just
explored? Let’s sum the matter up: (1) a ‘‘reversion’’ to ‘‘an early level of matu-
rity,’’ to a less ‘‘rational,’’ more ‘‘child-like,’’ way of ‘‘relating’’ to one’s ‘‘life’’;
(2) a ‘‘decrease’’ in the ‘‘activity’’ of the ‘‘frontal lobes,’’ a ‘‘less critical’’ percep-
tion of the world around one—in short, a shutting down of what we usually
think of as our brainpower; (3) the ‘‘surrender’’ of one’s ‘‘conscious will,’’ the
‘‘euphoria’’ that comes over one as he feels himself ‘‘controlled’’ by, ‘‘led’’ by,
the Big One, the supernatural ‘‘daddy’’ upon whom he depends every
moment of his existence and into whose ‘‘hand’’ he places his own will
(Christ instructs His ‘‘followers’’ to do ‘‘whatsoever’’ He ‘‘commands’’ [John
15:14]), to the point of becoming a symbiotic appendage, or ‘‘puppet,’’ of
the all-powerful Lord; (4) the tendency to adopt such an attitude, such a pos-
ture, when some sort of ‘‘crisis’’ or emergency enters into one’s affairs, when
the pressures of one’s environment, one’s ‘‘culture,’’ make themselves vigo-
rously known. All of this without exception resides at the very heart of the
Christian code upon which countless millions of human beings everywhere
construct their lives. As for the advent of the Holy Spirit as it is called,
it surges up in one when all of this, or a significant measure of it, begins work-
ing in the worshiper, begins awakening implicitly and mnemonically the time
of his earthly experience when he was, in fact, at ‘‘an early level of maturity,’’
when he was, in fact, less ‘‘rational’’ and more ‘‘child-like,’’ when his ‘‘frontal
lobes’’ were, in fact, only partially developed, when he was, in fact, led around
by a big one upon whom he wholly depended. And it is precisely, and sadly,
these naturalistic, biological recollections, efficacious and unseen, that con-
vince the worshiper of his religion’s veracity, its ‘‘truth,’’ and, of course, its
guiding, salvational role in his existence (adaptational tracking). What is
happening entirely on the inside is attributed psychologically and cognitively
to a putative supernatural presence on the outside, as the fundamental
misconception of the world goes solemnly or joyously forward.
Now that we grasp the infantilizing core of the Christian faith, now that
we perceive its magical, wishful, reversional nature, its intention to rescue,
to ‘‘save’’ its lost, mortal adherents by restoring them to the pattern, the
map, of the pastoral metaphor, with the little one tracking after the Big
One, we have no choice but to reject it once and for all as grown-up men
and women. Indeed, the very suggestion that a human being can rely upon
his ‘‘faith’’ as opposed to his mature, analytical, critical rationality for his
guidance in the world is in and of itself an infantilizing move, an attempt
to steer the adherent toward a ‘‘child-like’’ acceptance of supernatural, institu-
tional claims as opposed to an uncompromising probe into their perceptional
foundations. We made plain in a previous chapter that for Christianity faith
is ‘‘prayer and nothing but prayer.’’53 We also made plain that to pray success-
fully the Christian worshiper must adopt an utterly helpless, dependent,
child-like attitude; he must turn to the Big One ‘‘as the child in distress turns
to his mother.’’54 In short, he must act out his ‘‘reversion’’ to an ‘‘early level of
maturity’’ through an emotional performance of homeopathic magic, just as
the glossolalic acts out his own babbling reversion through his own unforget-
table, pitiable display. When it comes to such behavior, such conduct, such
‘‘faith,’’ we must now say emphatically, no—not only to Christianity but to
any religion or institution or organization or collection of lost souls looking
for some way, any way, of adapting themselves to the relentless actualities of
the natural universe around them. Already for millions of people on the
planet the game is up; the long age of religious magic is over. Perhaps in some
future era the majority of human beings, still under the spell of spirits and
suchlike, will also be delivered, will also be released from the addictive trance
state of infantilization. We can’t know, of course, but we can hopefully antici-
pate, and while we’re at it, work to diminish the world’s religious confusion as
much as we possibly can.
Notes
1. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1975), p. 284.
2. Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of Mind
(New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 161.
3. Ibid., pp. 79, 81, 152, 161, 163, 167.
4. I continue to employ the King James Version of Scripture, as I will do through-
out the course of the book.
5. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 182.
6. Alexander Cruden, Cruden’s Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testa-
ments (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1949), p. 483.
7. See Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 182. See also Gerald M. Edelman,
The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness (New York: Basic
Books, 1989).
8. Anne Graham Lotz, I Saw the Lord (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006),
p. 140.
9. Neil T. Anderson, Who I Am in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1993),
p. 134.
10. Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King, Experiencing God (Nashville, TN:
Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1994, pp. 36–37.
11. Cited in G. P. Fisher, A History of Christian Doctrine (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1978), p. 321.
12. H. Richard Niebuhr, Faith on Earth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1989), p. 95.
13. Louise Kendall and R. T. Kendall, eds., Great Christian Prayers (London: Hod-
der and Stoughton, 2000), p. 3.
14. Hanspeter A. Mallot, ‘‘Finding Our Way,’’ Scientific American Mind 16, no. 1
(May 2005): 70–77. This citation is on p. 77 of the article.
15. See David Roth and Sidney J. Blatt, ‘‘Spatial Representations of Psychopathol-
ogy,’’ Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 22 (1994): 871.
16. Blackaby and King, Experiencing God, p. 36 (see note 10).
17. Tim Gustafson, ed., Our Daily Bread, 51, nos. 3, 4, 5 (June, July,
August 2006): 28. Published by RBC Ministries, USA.
18. Ibid., p. 35.
20. Kendall and Kendall, Great Christian Prayers, p. 360 (my emphasis). See
note 4.
21. See John R. Hinnells, ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Religions (New York: Pen-
guin Books, 1997), p. 383.
22. Janet Collins, ‘‘Spiritual Journeys,’’ Vancouver Sun, May 26, 2007, p. G5.
23. See note 11.
24. Billy Graham, The Holy Spirit (New York: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1978), p. 10.
25. See Berton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of Christian
Myth (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 1–41. That Jesus actually existed is
highly probable but not certain.
26. Allen C. Myers, The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), p. 373.
27. Romano Guardini, Prayer in Practice, trans. L. Loewenstein-Wertheim
(London: Burns and Oates, 1957), p. 26.
28. James Shreeve, ‘‘Beyond the Brain,’’ National Geographic 207, no. 3
(March 2005): 25.
29. Elizabeth Svodoba, ‘‘Faces, Faces Everywhere,’’ New York Times, February 13,
2007, p. F6.
30. Frederick V. Malmstrom, ‘‘Close Encounters of the Facial Kind,’’ Skeptic 11,
no. 4 (2005): 45–47.
31. Robert Coles, The Spiritual Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Com-
pany, 1990), p. 40.
32. George A. Buttrick, So We Believe, So We Pray (New York: Abingdon-
Cokesbury, 1994), p. 30.
33. D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1971), p. 111.
35. Tim Stafford, Knowing the Face of God (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress,
1996), pp. 182–83.
36. N.A., God Speaks: Devotional, p. 133.
37. Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 51.
38. Kendall and Kendall, eds., Great Christian Prayers, p. 47.
39. Albert Christ-Janer, ed., American Hymns Old and New (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1980), p. 663.
40. Saint Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, trans. Rex Warner
(New York: Penguin Books, 2001), p. 21.
41. The Gospel Hour, Trinity Broadcasting Network, October 11, 2008, 7:00 p.m.,
44. N.A., God Speaks: Devotional, p. 145.
45. Christ-Janer, American Hymns Old and New, p. 694.
46. Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (New York, Barnes and Noble,
1996), p. 1831.
47. Ibid., p. 813.
48. Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldham, Why We Believe What
We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth
(New York: The Free Press, 2006), p. 191.
49. Kimberly Winston, ‘‘Faith’s Language Barrier?’’ USA Today, May 24, 2007, p. 9d.
50. John P. Kildahl, The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues (New York: Harper and
Row, 1972), p. 1.
51. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, God Will Make a Way (Nashville, TN:
Integrity Publishers, 2002), pp. 96–99.
52. Jonathan Haidt, ‘‘Honey, I Shrunk the President,’’ Los Angeles Times,
December 16, 2007, p. M4.
53. Friedrich Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion
(New York: Oxford University Press, [1932] 1997), p. xiii.
54. Guardini, Prayer in Practice, p. 77.
CHAPTER 4
Growing Up:
A Concluding Word
My purpose as I conclude is to underscore forcefully, and expand upon,

several of my contextual comments to the effect that Christianity, for all
its soothing, adaptational capacities, ultimately exacts too high a price in
sheer perceptual distortion to go unchallenged as a way of interpreting the
world around us. In a word, Christianity must be rejected and set aside as a
magical, prescientific mode of discourse. This is not, let me stress, to pick
on Christianity in particular; as I’ve maintained throughout, it is rather to
use Christianity as a vivid example of what is wrong with all supernatural
creeds, with all supernatural rites and doctrines that move the human species
backward into fallacious, cultic territory instead of forward into what is at
least the possibility of an accurate, verifiable perception of things. However,
it isn’t merely Christianity’s perceptual distortions that render it otiose and
destructive. As the subtitle of this book declares, and as I have attempted to
establish in detail for a couple hundred pages, Christianity also infantilizes
its followers in several major mental and emotional ways not the least of
which is urging them to rely for security and behavioral guidance on faith,
on the existence and the perfection of overarching parental spirits from the
beyond, as opposed to their own human reason and good sense.
Baptism, as we now appreciate,1 constitutes the basis of the whole Chris-
tian life.2 In the definitive words of the New Testament, or from the mouth
of Jesus Himself, ‘‘Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become
as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’’ (Matt. 18:3).3
Everything in Christian rite and doctrine, everything without exception, is
devoted to enhancing and deepening this ‘‘conversion,’’ to completing the
worshiper’s transformation into the Savior’s ‘‘little child.’’ To render it in
the terms we’ve been employing from the outset, with baptism Christianity’s
magical process of infantilization gets under way. The worshiper is instructed
to love Jesus more than he loves his actual parents. He is instructed to ‘‘ask
and receive,’’ to call upon his Parent-God for guidance, for support, for suste-
nance and love as an utterly helpless, utterly dependent little one. Prayer for
the Christian, this kind of prayer, becomes synonymous with faith itself.
The worshiper is told by his theological mentors to adopt an attitude of
moment-to-moment dependency on Christ as he goes about his business in
the world; without Jesus Christ, Christian teaching informs him, ‘‘he can
do nothing’’ (John 15:5). His entire life, at every instant of it, becomes a kind
of behavioral prayer, an open acknowledgment of his total reliance on the Big
One who watches over him. Through the pastoral metaphor that resides at
the core of the Christian tradition, the worshiper is advised to regard his
God as his Shepherd and himself as a sheep, following dutifully after the
all-controlling, all-providing supernatural Guide who leads him to food, to
water, to safety, to rest, and to the eternal home or ‘‘house’’ in which he will
abide permanently without a hint of separation, or aloneness. ‘‘Heaven,’’ we
are informed in the popular Christian literature of today, ‘‘is a great big hug
that lasts forever.’’4 Through the Eucharist the worshiper participates in a
transparently magical ceremony, a conjuration if there ever was one, wherein
he actually or symbolically feeds upon the body of his Deity, ingests His
blood and His flesh, mixes fluids and solids in sacred symbiosis, merging
Jesus with himself and himself with Jesus who becomes his ‘‘bread of life.’’
Finally for our purposes here, Jesus instructs His ‘‘little children’’ to obey
Him at all times, to do ‘‘whatsoever’’ He ‘‘commands’’ them to do, and if they
don’t do that, if they don’t become and remain good little girls and boys, then
they run the risk of losing their precious Leader, for as Jesus makes plain, only
those who obey Him may regard themselves as His ‘‘friend’’ (John 15:14).
What we have in all this, obviously, is a vivid psychological-mythic presenta-
tion of the basic biological situation, a thinly disguised depiction of our
earthly beginnings designed to arouse the worshiper’s implicit recollection
of his life-or-death involvement with his original caregivers such that he
may feel within himself both the ‘‘truth’’ of the Christian narrative and an
actual opportunity to reimmerse himself magically into an idealized version
of his precious interpersonal, opening days. When this occurs and the wor-
shiper adopts fully the particulars of his religion, he is said to have experi-
enced a visitation from the ‘‘Holy Spirit.’’
Here is the point: as we come to see all this fully, to demystify the sacred rite
and doctrine through realistic neuropsychological analysis, to fathom the mag-
ical process of infantilization in which the religion’s power is ultimately rooted,
we realize that Christianity provides us with precious, indeed invaluable under-
standing of what it means to mature as men and women, to accomplish pre-
cisely the opposite of a wishful return to an infantilized state of mind and
Growing Up: A Concluding Word 193
emotion—in a word, to grow up and take our place as genuinely developed,

contributing members of the human community. We begin the realistic process
of growth by examining vigorously the cultural, institutional, social, or personal
activities and behaviors in which we are engaged, or are invited to become
engaged, for any trace, any suggestion, of magical content, and if and when
we discover such content we reject it immediately and prepare ourselves to
explain our rejection to anyone who may be interested. I do not have in mind
here a trace of the ‘‘magic’’ by which we grow and thrive as we simply go about
our business on the planet, our belief in ourselves, our healthy self-interest and
self-confidence, in short, the kind of ‘‘magic’’ upon which Géza Róheim con-
centrates when he distinguishes a person’s faith in his own ‘‘abilities’’ from the
‘‘omnipotence fantasies’’ of the ‘‘all-powerful sorcerer.’’5 I have in mind, rather,
the kind of magic that pervades the Christian religion, from baptism, to prayer,
to the Eucharist, to glossolalia and the drawing down of the Holy Spirit. Such
beliefs and behaviors are found throughout the world among an endless variety
of religious sects, cults, and gatherings of all kind, from the mountains of Asia,
to the sands of Africa, to the valleys and plains of the Americas and Europe; and
in every case without exception such beliefs and behaviors infantilize partici-
pants, stunting their mental and emotional growth by playing down their rea-
son and good sense, diminishing their capacity to recognize sound, verifiable
information, distorting their intuitive and intellectual judgment of the commu-
nications to which they are exposed.
We continue our process of growth by acknowledging firmly and fully the
biological facts of our existence on the planet, our separation from the mater-
nal matrix, our smallness or vulnerability to the ever-present dangers of acci-
dent and illness, our mortality, our eventual demise and permanent
disappearance from the universe. We view Christianity’s magical affirmations
(eternal union with a loving, omnipotent Parent-God whose divine plan
includes everything that happens to us as individuals) as ultimately the veil-
ing, or the denying, of the inescapable biological realities that not only mark
us but define us as natural creatures in the world. We recognize the imperfec-
tions of scientific, evolutional approaches to our existence and our quality as
living forms, yet we find such approaches more plausible and more poten-
tially definitive than the imponderable, prescientific fantasies of the Christian
faith. We don’t believe in virgin births, in people walking about on the surface
of the sea, or in dead folks emerging from the grave. If we cannot discover
some ordinary, empiric, verifiable support for astonishing, preternatural
claims, we reject them. When we read that ‘‘heaven is a great big hug that
lasts forever,’’6 or hear Jack Van Impe declaring that ‘‘prayer is like calling
home every day,’’7 we recognize the child-like dependency, the denial of
separation, and the inappropriate infantilism that reside in such utterances

when they are made by supposedly grown-up members of our species.
We don’t wish to be this way, to be involved in such retrograde states of mind
and emotion. For us, ‘‘home’’ in this childish, wishful sense is simply gone.
We’re on our own now. When we find Anne Graham Lotz maintaining that
Christ’s ultimate message to us as He participates divinely in our earthly lives
is ‘‘never will I leave you; never will I forsake you; . . . I love you,’’8 we feel
precisely as we do when we read the earlier words on heaven and prayer: such
utterances indicate a state of infantile neediness and all-absorbing, irrational
fantasy that borders on the pathological. We see such states acted out rou-
tinely on the Christian television channels, of course: we see the rolling eyes
and sweaty faces, the waving hands and trembling bodies; we see the open,
shouting mouths; we hear the whoops and howls, the ecstatic cries, ‘‘He loves
me! He loves me! He loves me!’’ Once again, we don’t wish to be this way.
Such conduct strikes us as pitiable. We regret that our fellow human beings
allow themselves to be drawn in this infantile, irrational direction.
Our task of growing up moves forward as we repudiate any and all indica-
tions of the omnipotence of thought in ourselves or in others. Those who claim
to have special, superhuman powers of perception, powers that afford them
knowledge of the supernatural sphere, we immediately mark us backward-
looking, retrograde personalities. We are familiar with the inextricable link
between the omnipotence of thought and the grave narcissistic issues that reside
deep within the individual who makes such extraordinary claims. Róheim’s ‘‘all-
powerful sorcerer’’9 is of interest to us only as a phenomenon to study, and we
apply the very same evaluation to cult leaders, mystical wisemen, mediums,
priests, pastors, and self-styled gurus of all sorts and fashions. Nor do we coun-
tenance those who claim to be the blessed followers of omnipotent supernatural
entities, to be specially ‘‘chosen’’ by gods and spirits, and this includes, of
course, the ‘‘converted,’’ Christ’s ‘‘little children,’’ His newly appointed ‘‘saints’’
(I Cor. 1:2). All such claimants, all such individuals and groups, we regard as
the blood relations, the not-so-distant cousins as it were, of Róheim’s ‘‘all-
powerful sorcerer.’’ When Billy Graham, preoccupied as usual with images of
omnipotence, insists that as Christians we are surrounded at all times by mighty
guardian angels, hordes of them, in fact, who watch over us and protect us from
harm,10 we think to ourselves, there it is again, the religious denial of our small-
ness and vulnerability, Christianity’s incapacity simply to accept the realities of
our biological lives, its pathetic attempt to shore up the wounded narcissism
and diminish the persistent anxiety of its worshipers by aligning them with
spiritual giants. ‘‘You may think I’m just another barber trimming hair in this
little shop, but as a Christian I’m connected to divine, all-powerful angels
who look out for me.’’11 What Graham and his followers need to be told,
politely, should be perfectly clear at this point: grow up; stop the silly super-
natural nonsense, and just grow up; surely it is time to do that now; we are all
simply regular human beings attempting to thrive on the surface of the planet;
there is no such thing as a guardian angel, okay?
Finally, we grow as we fully accept our mortality, as we refuse to indulge
ourselves in what Ernest Becker calls in a famous phrase, ‘‘the denial of
death.’’12 We don’t say to ourselves as we contemplate our biological cessa-
tion, maybe I won’t really die after all; or, maybe death is only a transition
to another mode of being; or, I believe my soul will live on; or, I’ll be with
my loving Jesus forever; or, maybe I’ll be reincarnated as a flamingo and go
soaring off into the sunset, or some such. We consider Christianity’s denial
of death (Jesus arises from the grave; salvation is available through Christ)
to be a major facet of its infantilizing process and the ultimate witness to its
overall failure of nerve; for in the last analysis that is what Christianity boils
down to as an approach to our human existence, a failure of nerve. There
can be no growing up until one honestly faces up to the ineluctable reality of
his or her demise and permanent disappearance from the universe. To put it
in the paradoxical terms to which we’re accustomed, to ‘‘be’’ dead is to ‘‘be’’
nonexistent. Moreover, we are supremely aware at this point in our develop-
ment as thoughtful creatures that the denial of death is routinely acted out in
myriad violent ways, most notably in the destruction of other living entities.
For many human beings within a variety of sociocultural contexts, including
war, homicide, and hunting, to kill is to experience deep within mind and
body an exhilarating sense of one’s aliveness and hence, a reduction of one’s
anxiety over death. Accordingly, as grown-ups, we will actively seek to explain
and hopefully to diminish the denial of death whenever an opportunity to do
so presents itself. And if all of this somehow hurts, if we undergo anxiety, and
sadness, and anguish, and actual psychic and physical pain as we face up to
the facts, well, so be it. We can say to ourselves, perhaps, something like this:
better to have one moment of honest, face-to-face contact with things as they
are, no matter how much death anxiety that engenders, than have a lifetime
of comforting illusions.
Omar Khayyám writes in famous lines of verse,
Ah, love could you and I with Him conspire

To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Remold it nearer to the heart’s desire?
(Rubáiyát, stanza 99)
Here is Christianity’s magical program in unforgettable lucidity. Through

magical doctrine and rite the worshiper ‘‘conspires’’ with ‘‘Him,’’ the all-
powerful Parent-God, to ‘‘grasp’’ or get hold of both mentally and physically
the ‘‘fallen’’ or ‘‘sorry’’ state of the world in which he resides and then, once
more through magical doctrine and rite, ‘‘shatter it to bits’’ and ‘‘remold it
nearer to the heart’s desire.’’ There was separation from the matrix, the sever-
ance of mankind (Adam and Eve) from the paradisal Garden and its loving
Creator; there was loss of paradisal ascendancy, the sudden advent of small-
ness, of vulnerability to accident and illness, to the vagaries of postlapsarian
existence; there was physical mortality as death entered creation, the utter ces-
sation of life and being, the endless dust swirling about in the wind; there is
now, however, the new Adam and Eve, eternal union with the omnipotent
Provider, the protection of His loving presence (including, for Billy Graham,
His mighty angels), and of course, the banishment of death, life everlasting in
Heaven where the virtuous Christian has access to ‘‘a hug that lasts forever.’’
All of this, needless to say, is exactly the opposite of what the grown-up Omar
Khayyám has in mind. For the medieval Persian poet, the inescapable reality,
the inescapable fact, is the ‘‘sorry scheme of things entire,’’ is the way things
are in the natural, biological world. We discover in Omar Khayyám the
acceptance of our condition, the realization that we cannot change it, as much
as we might like to through the putative efficacy of magical action (oh, that
we could remold the world). For those who have attained acceptance
and maturity, the bribe of magic, the bribe of Ali Baba, is a thing of the
past, a childish fantasy, a poetical toy and nothing more. For Christianity,
as we’ve seen, magic is the key, along with the infantilization (or irrationality)
that makes magic a viable alternative to mature behavior. The magical
perfection for which Omar Khayyám can only pine Christianity seriously
extends to its infantilized followers (the sheep) who eagerly embrace
it through their wishful longing to escape the facts of the human estate.
In this way, Christianity’s hand is ultimately joined with the hand of Ali Baba,
and it will always be joined thus. For when Christianity drops the magical
process of infantilization, it drops everything that resides within the very core
of its theology.
Notes
1. Baptism is discussed fully at the inception of Chapter 3, Part One.
2. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications,
1994), p. 312.
3. All the scriptural quotations in this book are from the King James Version of
the Bible.
4. Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul (Deerfield Beach, FL: Heath
Communications, 1997), p. 294.
5. Géza Róheim, Magic and Schizophrenia (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1955), pp. 45–46. For an additional interesting discussion of these matters,
see Marcia Cavell, ‘‘Self Knowledge and Self-Understanding,’’ American Imago 65,
no. 3 (Fall 2008): 357–78.
7. Jack Van Impe Presents, Trinity Broadcasting Network, September 16, 2008,
7:00 p.m., Channel 40, Orange County, California.
8. Anne Graham Lotz, I Saw the Lord (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006),
pp. 88–90.
9. See Roheim, note 5 above.
10. Billy Graham, Angels: God’s Secret Agents (New York: Doubleday, 1954),
pp. 72, 93.
11. The author’s quotation.
12. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press, 1973).
Index
Abstinence, 119–21 Babbling of infants, 183, 184–85

Acts of the Apostles, 179–80 Babies. See Infants/infancy
Adam (Genesis), 7, 92–94, 97, 130– Bachelard, Gaston, 127, 128
31, 196 Baptism: as the basis of Christian life,
Adaptation, 109, 139–51, 143–44 1, 15, 73, 75; the Church as
Addictions, 52–53 ‘‘mother,’’ 129–30; completed in
Adult perceptions of the universe, 31 and through the Eucharist, 91, 95,
Affect, Imagery, Consciousness 98–99; environmental tracking
(Tomkins), 21 system, 146–47; infantilization
Affective system, 20–22, 44–46, 53, process and, 73–75, 123, 191–92;
55, 171–72 magical system of Christianity and,
Afterbirth, 61 73–75, 76; as a mixture of the
Afterlife. See Heaven biological and the spiritual, 4, 6,
The Alchemy of Prayer (Taylor), 85 73–74, 75
Amen, 13 Basic biological situation, 19–22, 24,
Anderson, Rev. Neil T.: on baptism, 73– 48–50, 78, 80–83
74, 76; on dependence on God, 104, Baughman, Terry R., 180–81
110, 117, 122; on God’s love, 116, Becker, Ernest, 195
125–26, 133; on light and darkness, Bergman, Anni, 33
176; on obedience, 116, 117; on the Bernardine, Saint, 99–100
pastoral metaphor, 150–51 Blackaby, Henry T., 102–3, 107, 115,
The Antichrist (Nietzsche), 120, 121 116, 151–54, 160–61
Anxiety. See Fear of death Bollas, Christopher, 84, 85
The Apostles, 179–80 Bonar, Horatius, 81
Armstrong, Karen, 12–13 Book of Genesis, 92–94, 97
Arndt, Johann, 76 Brown, Ron, 127
The Art of Prayer (Jones), 78 Burkert, Walter, 82
Attachment, 22, 46, 49–50. See also Buttrick, George Arthur, 81, 88, 170
Separation-individuation process
Attractor states, 51–53, 57 Caregivers. See Mothers
Augustine, Saint, 156, 158, 175–76 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 75,
Autistic stage of development, 35 91, 100–101, 102, 104, 129
Autobiographical (explicit) memory, Catholics/Catholicism, 59, 77, 95, 98,
25, 30, 49–50, 53–57 180
Autonomy, 32–43 Chambers, Oswald, 157–58
200 Index
Charismatics. See Pentecostal of prayer, 79–83, 91; established in

movement human psyche prior to arrival of
Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul Jesus, 122; imitative symbiotic
(Canfield), 126 arrangement, 106–7; Jesus as the
Children. See Infants/infancy true Vine, 109–10, 112, 116, 117,
Chironna, Mark, 124 122, 127, 129; moment-to-moment
Christianity, overview of: cultic origins relationship of dependency, 103–4,
of, 12–16, 112–13, 119, 191, 193, 105–8, 110–13; for ordinary Chris-
194; early history as breakaway tians, 107–9; within prayer, 79–83,
Jewish sect, 14; Roman persecution, 91, 163, 187; rejection of, 68, 187,
14, 15; Tylor’s ‘‘minimum definition 191–96; speaking in tongues (glos-
of religion,’’ 62 solalia) and, 184–86
Cloud, Henry, 103, 184 Descartes, René, 172
Coles, Robert, 169–71, 174–75 The Developing Mind (Siegel), 22, 48–
Collins, Janet, 165 49, 50
Coming home theme, 127–30 Developmental context of infantiliza-
Communion. See the Eucharist tion, overview, 19–68; attractions
Conscience rooted in deepest affective and addictions, 51–53; basic
core, 55 biological situation, 19–22, 24, 48–
Contagion magic, 61–62 50, 78, 80–83; implicit memory,
Cotter, Patrick, 78, 79, 80 state-dependent memory, and pri-
Crisis, deliverance from, 24, 66–67 ming, 22–24; infantile amnesia, 25–
Cultic nature of Christian theology 31, 42, 53–58, 75; magic, 58–68;
and rite, 12–16, 112–13, 119, 191, the mirror, 43–46, 48, 171–72;
193, 194 separation-individuation process,
31–43; the Word, 46–48
Danger situations, deliverance from, Differentiation phase, 36–39
24, 66–67 Dissociation, 25–31
Dante, 55 Doctrine of justification, 75
Darkness, 175–78 Dossey, Larry, 80, 90
Death: acceptance of reality, 195–96; Douglas, Mary, 59–61
Christianity’s denial of, 127, 195– Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters
96; Christ’s willingness to die for (Person), 32
followers, 112–13, 115; fear of, 6–7, Drive system, 21
19, 32, 92, 122, 130–34, 195–96; as Dual memory system, 54–55
final separation from the world, Durkheim, Émile, 62–63, 65
122, 130–33; heaven, 4, 6–7, 126,
127, 195–96; mythological veiling Early (implicit) memory, 9–11, 24,
and comprehensive denial of, 130– 25, 28–31, 50, 53–57, 87–90,
31; as punishment, 131; tracking 124–25
arrangements vs., 142, 147; Eating, 43
willingness to die for fellow Edelman, Gerald M., 28, 143, 147,
Christians, 112–13, 115 148
Dependency theme, 101–12; as basis The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, 168
Index 201
Elwell, Walter A., 78 Feet, 61

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 122–23 ‘‘Finding Our Way’’ (Mallot), 160
Emoticons, 66–68 Fisher, G. P., 75, 136 n.47
Engrams, 23 Footprints, 61
Environmental tracking, 139–51 Forde, Gerhard O., 97
Erikson, Erik H., 24 Foster, Richard S., 79
The Ethical Brain (Gazzaniga), 23 Frazer, James G., 58–59, 61–62
The Eucharist, 91–101; baptism Free recall studies, 54
completed in and through, 91, 95,
98–99; critical attention elicited Gallagher, Winifred, 52–53
by, 91; during early history of Garden of Eden, 36, 92–94, 97. See
Christianity, 15; example, 2–3; also Adam (Genesis)
Jesus’s love of faithful associated ‘‘Gathering Separated Children’’ (The
with, 123; Jesus’s pronouncements Watchtower), 131
on, 96; modern scientific view of Gazzaniga, Michael S., 23
matter as energy and, 136 n.47; A General Theory of Magic (Mauss),
psychological inquiries, 5–6, 100– 61
101; rituals and settings associated Genesis, 92–94, 97
with, 96; security within the body Glossolalia. See Speaking in tongues
of the Parent-God, 92–95; state- God. See the Holy Spirit
dependent memory systems trig- God Speaks: Devotional (Hewett), 111,
gered by, 94–95, 97; symbolic 161–63, 175, 176–77
acceptance of, 97–98 The Golden Bough (Frazer), 58–59,
Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical 61–62
Theology (Elwell), 78 ‘‘Good enough’’ beginnings, 10, 26,
Eve (Genesis), 7, 92–94, 97, 130–31, 142
196 Graham, Billy, 111, 118–20, 133, 136
Evoked companions, 45–46 n.40, 168, 194–95, 196
Evolution, 143, 160, 169–71 Great Christian Prayers (Kendall and
Experiencing God (Blackaby and King), Kendall), 98–99
102–3, 107, 115, 116, 151–54, The Great Transformation (Armstrong),
160–61 13
Explicit (autobiographical) memory, Guardini, Romano, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83,
25, 30, 49–50, 53–57 85–86, 85–89, 169
Face of God, 168–78; as extension of Haidt, Jonathan, 186

the caregiver face, 172–75; hidden, Hallesby, Ole, 77–78, 79, 80–81,
175–78; light associated with, 175 83–84
Facial recognition and tracking, The HarperCollins Dictionary of
169–71 Religion, 60
Faith, 76–78. See also Prayer Healing Words (Dossey), 80
Fear of death, 6–7, 19, 32, 92, 122, Heaven, 4, 6–7, 126, 127, 195–96. See
130–34, 195–96 also Death
Feedback loops, 23 Hebb, Donald O., 21, 50
202 Index
Heiler, Friedrich, 4, 76–77, 78, 79–81, anomalous to, 120–21; methods

83, 84, 85, 90 and theses, 7–12; moral denotation
Hewett, James, 161–63. See also God of ‘‘lost’’ metaphor, 155–57;
Speaks: Devotional psychological inquiries, 4–7;
A History of Christian Doctrine (Fisher), thematic vignettes, 1–4
75, 136 n.47 Infants/infancy: afterbirth, 61; autistic
A History of the World’s Religions (Noss stage of development, 35; babble
and Noss), 60 similar to speaking in tongues, 183,
Holy Communion. See the Eucharist 184–85; basic biological situation,
The Holy Spirit: face of God, 168–78; 19–22, 24, 48–50, 78, 80–83;
God’s unconditional love, 115, differentiation phase, 36–39; early
125–27; Graham on, 136 n.40; practicing period and the practicing
hidden, 86, 88, 175–78; life subphase proper, 37–38; environ-
emanating from, 86; light associated mental tracking, 139–51; facial
with, 175; moment-to-moment recognition and tracking by, 169–
relationship of dependency, 103–4; 71; inclination to concentrate on the
naturalistic origins in human mother’s face, 43–46, 48, 171–72;
psychobiology, 22; neurologic, infantile amnesia, 25–31, 42, 53–
memorial experiences relating to, 58, 75; infantile model recreated
94–95, 98–100, 110–12; percep- in prayer, 82, 83–85; innocence
tions of, 86–88; prayer as ‘‘proof ’’ of, 94; lap babyhood, 37; love
of the presence of God, 29–30; truth between parents and, 123; magic
of the Word within the seeker and, rooted in infant-mother bond, 67–
10–11; usage of ‘‘Holy Ghost’’ term, 68; mother-infant dyad recreated
136 n.39; as voice in ones life, by ‘‘Jesus within,’’ 74–75; mystery
153–54 element of mother-child relation-
Homeopathic magic, 61–62, 154, 163, ships, 41; narcissism in, 38, 39;
184–86 object loss, 33, 38; omnipotence felt
Homeostasis, 35, 139, 141, 142, 156, by, 35–36; psychological accounts of
158, 167 separation-attachment, 32–43; rap-
House of the Lord, 167 prochement subphase, 39–40, 42;
How to Pray (Cotter), 78, 79, 80 separation-individuation as ‘‘second
Hume, Basil, 175 birth,’’ 35; stranger anxiety, 37;
symbiosis, 29, 31, 33, 34–35, 36,
Immaculate conception, 120 39, 40, 67; symbol formation, 47–
Implicit (early) memory, 9–11, 24, 25, 48; tie to societal institutions
28–31, 50, 53–57, 87–90, 124–25 grounded in the tie to the parent,
Independence, 32–43 64–65; trauma and maltreatments
Infantilization, overview, 1–17; during childhood, 25, 28
coming home theme, 127–30; cultic Inferno (Dante), 55
Christianity, 12–16, 112–13, 119; Innocence of babies, 94
demystification and rejection of, Insight and Responsibility (Erikson), 24
147, 187, 191–96; described, 9–10, Intellect, 46
191–92; human sexuality Intellectual stereoscopy, 47
Index 203
Internalization, 23, 45–46 King, Hans, 77

The Interpersonal World of the Infant King, Heather, 107–9
(Stern), 44–45 Kneeling during prayer, 28, 55, 58, 80,
82, 87, 96
James, William, 50, 84–85, 90 Knowing the Face of God (Stafford), 91,
James (apostle), 13 173–75
Jesus Christ: on baptism, 74, 191;
blood and body of, 3, 5, 15, 96, Lamont, Corliss, 6
168; conditional love of devotees, Langer, Susanne K., 61
113, 116; constant presence, 74; as Language, 46–48, 56. See also Speaking
cult leader, 12–16, 112–13, 119; in tongues (glossolalia)
death, 14, 112–13, 115; depen- Lap babyhood, 37
dency on, 101–12, 116, 117, 122; Light, 175–78
face of, 168; family of, 128–30; as Lindsay, Gordon, 78, 80
friend, 97–100, 117; immaculate Lisa (parishioner example), 117–18,
conception of, 120; Jewish back- 126, 127–28
ground, 13, 58, 168; light associated Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn, 164, 165
with, 176; love of, 1, 14, 74–75, Locational memory, 159–60
178–79; message of love, 123–24, Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth,
128–29; modern depictions of, 168; 158–59
mother-infant dyad recreated by The Lord, 97
‘‘Jesus within,’’ 74–75; multidimen- ‘‘Lost sheep of Israel’’ metaphor, 155–
sional presentation of within the 57. See also the pastoral metaphor
New Testament, 12; natural root of Lotz, Anne Graham, 106–7, 133, 148–
the worshiper’s biological existence 49, 150, 194
and, 109–10; prayer on the mount, Love: ‘‘coming home’’ theme and, 127–
77; recruitment by, 13–14; scholarly 30; conditional love of devotees by
debate on existence of, 17 n.12; Jesus, 113, 116; environmental
umbilical attachment to, 109, 111– tracking, 151–53, 154; ‘‘Gathering
12, 117; unconditional love by, Separated Children’’ (The Watch-
125–27; as the Vine, 109–10, 112, tower), 131; ‘‘God is love,’’ 49; God’s
116, 117, 122, 127, 129. See also the unconditional love, 115, 125–27;
pastoral metaphor during infancy and childhood, 1,
Jews and Judaism, 13, 14, 58, 108, 14, 74–75, 123, 178–79; of Jesus, 1,
166, 167–68 14, 74–75, 116, 178–79; longing to
John (apostle), 13, 14, 131, 173 see the face of God and, 170–71;
Johnston, Elizabeth, 54, 55–57 obedience to God and, 116, 122–34
Jones, Timothy, 78, 79, 81 Luther, Martin, 75, 76, 77, 78, 97
Justification, 75
Magic: apparition-like quality of
Khayyám, Omar, 195, 196 mothers, 84, 85, 88; baptism, 73–
Kildahl, John P., 181–83, 185, 186 75, 76; coming home theme, 130;
King, Claude V., 102–3, 107, 115, demystification of, 193; denial of
116, 151–54, 160–61 dependency via, 68; described, 9;
204 Index
the Eucharist, 96; homeopathic, 61– Metamorphosis of the self, 84–85

62, 154, 163, 184–86; love of Jesus The mirror, 43–46, 48, 171–72
and, 124, 125–26; Malinowski on, Mnemonic priming, 21, 23–24
63, 66–68; moment-to-moment Moment-to-moment dependency on
dependency on Jesus, 103; moral Jesus, 101–12; imitative symbiotic
denotation of ‘‘lost’’ metaphor, arrangement, 106–7; Jesus as the
155–57; overview of developmental true Vine, 109–10, 112, 116, 117,
context of infantilization, 58–68; 122, 127, 129; for ordinary
pilgrimage believers, 163–65; as Christians, 107–9
responses to trauma situations, 66– Morality, 120–21
68; transformational encounters, 84; Mortality. See Death
transitional objects as, 65; Victorian Mothers: apparition-like qualities, 84,
approaches to, 4, 58–62 85, 88; the Church presented as,
Mahler, Margaret S., 33–35, 36–42, 110, 129–30; facial recognition and
43, 46, 67 tracking by babies, 169–71; halluci-
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 63, 66–68 natory sense of unity with a mater-
Mallot, Hanspeter A., 160 nal matrix, 24; impact on children
Malmstrom, Frederick V., 169 during infancy and early childhood,
Mapping: mother’s face as the infant’s 26; lap babyhood, 37; love between
first map, 169–71; spiritual maps, children and, 1, 14, 74–75, 123,
28, 30–31, 49, 57, 159–64 178–79; mystery element of
Mapping Paradise, 4 mother-child relationships, 41;
Matheson, George, 100, 159, 160, 164 omnipotence felt by infants, 35–36;
Mauss, Marcel, 61 parental control, 113–14, 117;
Memory: adaptive behavior as result principles of prayer relating to, 85–
of, 143–44; autobiographical 90; projections between children
(explicit), 25, 30, 49–50, 53–57; and, 41; religious realm corre-
dual memory system, 54–55; sponding to early parental presence,
evolutionary root of, 160; implicit 26–30; replaced by wives, 64, 65;
(early), 9–11, 24, 25, 28–31, 50, separation-individuation from, 19,
53–57, 87–90, 124–25; infantile 33–43; ‘‘sound image’’ of, 42;
amnesia, 25–31, 42, 53–58, 75; ‘‘symbiotic mothering half ’’ of
as key element in consciousness, infants, 39; transformational
143–44, 148; locational, 159–60; encounters, 84
magical system rooted in, 9; as a
means to prepare for the future, Narcissism in infants, 38, 39
23; neurobiological investigations Naturalism, defined, 7–8
of the developing mind-brain, 48– Natural Symbols (Douglas), 59–60
51; reached through prayer, 28–30, Navel-strings, 61, 109, 111–12, 117
87–90; reactivated via affective Neurological events, 9, 21–22, 23,
exchanges, 45–46; value-laden, 50 48–50
Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Newberg, Andrew, 180, 181, 183–84
World Religions, 60 The New Book of Christian Prayers
Merton, Thomas, 175 (Bonar), 81
Index 205
New Testament, composition of, 17 Patrick, Saint, 99

n.12 Paul (apostle), 13, 77, 128, 129, 131,
Niebuhr, H. Richard, 97, 108, 133– 132, 173, 176
34, 155 Penguin Dictionary of Religions, 60
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 120, 121 Pentecostal movement, 3, 6, 178, 180,
Nitsch, Cordula, 160 181, 186. See also Speaking in
Noss, David S., 60 tongues (glossolalia)
Noss, John Boyer, 60 Person, Ethel S., 32
Pharisees, 144–45
Oates, Wayne E., 183 Pilgrimage believers, 163–65
Obedience, will, and control, 112–22; Pine, Fred, 33
dichotomous quality of the care- Prayer, 75–90; dependency theme,
giver’s loving ministrations, 114; 79–83, 91, 103–4, 163, 187; early
love of Jesus associated with, 116; history of, 77; faith and, 76–78;
sanctification and submission, 118– forced, 85; Guardini’s guide to
19. See also Sin supplication, 85–89; heard and
Object constancy, 40–41 answered by God, 78–79; infantile
Object loss, 33, 38 model recreated in, 4–5, 82, 83–85;
O God, I Cried, No Dark Disguise Jesus’s love of faithful associated
(hymn), 177–78 with, 123; magic covertly present in,
Omnipotence felt by infants, 35–36 60; ‘‘making contact’’ with the
Our Daily Bread (Gustafson), 161 divine presence, 1–2, 5; parent-child
The Oxford Illustrated History of interactions relating to, 28–30, 78–
Christianity (Wiles), 101 79, 80–83, 81–82; petitionary
Ozman, Agnes, 180 nature of, 78–79, 80–83, 90; as
‘‘proof ’’ of the presence of God, 29–
Paradise, 36, 92–94, 97. See also Adam 30; purpose of, 76; realm of implicit
(Genesis) recollection reached through, 87–
Parents. See Mothers 90; ritualistic behaviors, described,
Parham, Charles, 180 28, 55, 58, 80, 82, 87, 96; telepathy
The pastoral metaphor, 139–87; in, 62; transformational encounters,
application of, 151–68; 84–85; as yearning for union with
environmental tracking device, 139– God, 83
51; longing for God’s face, 168–78; Prayer (Hallesby), 77–78, 79, 80–81,
‘‘lost sheep of Israel’’ metaphor, 83–84
155–57; the love relationship with Prayer (Heiler), 4, 76–77, 78
God and, 151–53; pastoral life in Prayer in Practice (Guardini), 77, 78,
the ancient Near East, 147, 149–50; 80, 81, 83, 85–86, 85–89, 169
the pilgrimage, 165; proselytizers Prayer That Moves Mountains
(the Apostles), 179–80; Psalm 23, (Lindsay), 80
79, 159, 166–67; speaking in Prepubescence, 120
tongues (glossolalia), 178–87; Preschoolers, 41
spiritual maps, 159–64; within Primary transformation, 84
Western civilization, 148 Primitive cultures, 63, 66–67
206 Index
Projections between mothers and Rogers, Robert, 45

children, 41 Róheim, Géza, 64, 65, 67–68, 193,
Proselytizers (the Apostles), 179–80 194
Protestants/Protestantism, 59, 77, 95, Roman Empire, 14–15
98, 180 Rothe, Richard, 77
Pruitt, James, 78
Psalm 23, 79, 159, 166–67 Salvation, 94–95, 98
The Psychological Birth of the Human Sanctification doctrine, 118–19
Infant (Mahler, Pine and Bergman), Schacter, Daniel L., 21–22, 23
33–35, 36–42, 43 Schizophrenia, 178
Psychological understanding of Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 76–77
Christianity, 9, 19–22, 24, 48–50 Schuller, Rev. Robert H., 73, 103–4,
The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues 117–18, 126–28
(Kildahl), 181–83, 185, 186 Science, 62
Purity and Danger (Douglas), 60 Searching for Memory (Schacter), 22
Secularists/secularism, 31, 62–63
Rapprochement subphase of infants, See of Peter, 110
39–40, 42 Self-sufficiency, 122
Rationalization, 9 Separation-individuation process:
Rebirth, 1, 6 absence of God’s face, 177–78;
Recognition systems, 143 anxiety recreated by Christ’s com-
Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles mandment, 113–14, 116–17;
toward God (King), 107–9 attachment, described, 46; death as
Reductionism, 11–12 final separation of the individual
Referential pointing, 47 from the world, 122, 130–33;
Regression, 108–9 development of representational
Rejection of infantilization, 187, thought, 47–48; dichotomous qual-
191–96 ity of the caregiver’s loving minis-
Religious narratives, 24, 49, 51–53, 57 trations, 114; emotional events
Religious supernaturalism, 24 resting upon, 32–43; evoked com-
Renewalists. See Pentecostal movement panions, 46; love of Jesus and, 124–
Repeated behaviors, 21–22 25; mothers replaced by wives, 64,
Representation of such Interaction 65; Parent-God as supernatural sur-
becomes Generalized (RIG), 44–45 rogate, 57–58; the pilgrimage, 163–
Restak, Richard M., 53 65; process, described by Mahler,
Retrieval cues, 45 36–40; ritualistic behaviors of
Revelations. See the Holy Spirit Christianity and, 6, 41; separation
RIG (Representation of such as the Christian’s ultimate concern,
Interaction becomes Generalized), 116–17; sin and separation, 55, 92–
44–45 94, 97, 131–32; tracking arrange-
Rituals, 41, 46, 96. See also specific ments, 141–51; transitional objects,
rituals by name 65; varying degrees of intensity
Rizzuto, Ana-Maria, 42, 170 throughout the life cycle, 42–43,
Robertson, Pat, 127, 128, 129 93, 97
Index 207
700 Club (television), 127 Steinke, Darcey, 107–9

Sexual relations, 119–21 Stern, Daniel N., 44–45
The Shadow of the Object (Bollas), 84 Stone, Joshua David, 79
Shakespeare, William, 38 Stranger anxiety, 37, 46
The shepherd. See the pastoral Submission, 118–19
metaphor Sucking, 43
Siegel, Daniel J., 22, 23, 48–49, 50, 51 Supernatural narratives, 24
Sin: Adam and Eve, 7, 92–94, 97, 130– Superstition, 58–59, 61. See also Magic
31, 196; death as punishment, 131; Symbiosis, 29, 31, 33–36, 39, 40, 67,
‘‘Gathering Separated Children’’ 90, 165
(The Watchtower), 131; separation Symbol formation, 47–48
from God as consequence, 55, 92–
94, 97, 131–32. See also Obedience, Taylor, Terry Lynn, 85
will, and control Teach Yourself to Pray (Winward), 80
Smith, Robertson, 59 Teleonomic system, 143
Socialization, 46–47, 62–65, 67, Telepathy, 62
139–44 ten Boom, Corrie, 157
Soul Psychology (Stone), 79 Theological animals, 31
Southwood, H. M., 43 Thought development, 46
Spatial awareness, 159–60 Titon, Jeff, 181
Speaking in tongues (glossolalia), 178– Tomkins, Silvan S., 21
87; dependency theme and, 184–86; Townsend, John, 103, 184
described, 178, 181–83; early Toynbee, Arnold, 83
history of Pentecostal movement, Tracking arrangements, 139–51, 156–
180, 181; emotional fulfillment via, 57, 159, 163–65, 169–71
181, 182, 186; example, 3; frontal Transformational encounters, 84–85
lobe activity decreased during, 183– Transitional objects, 65
85; infantile babble similar to, 183, Trauma and maltreatments during
184–85; magical system and, 184– childhood, 25, 28
86; proselytizers (the Apostles), Trinity Broadcasting Network, 175
179–80; psychological inquiries, 6 Tylor, Edward, 62
Speech, 46–48, 56. See also Speaking in
tongues (glossolalia) Umbilical cords, 61, 109, 111–12, 117
The Spiritual Life of Children (Coles), The unconscious, 23
169–71 University of Toronto, 53
Spiritual maps, 28, 30–31, 49, 57,
159–64 Van Impe, Jack, 193
Spiritual narratives, 24, 49, 51–53, 57 Victorian period, 4, 5, 58–62
Spitz, René, 43 Vygotsky, Lev, 46, 47, 56
Spurgeon, C. H., 78
Stafford, Tim, 74, 91, 97–98, 105–6, Waldman, Mark Robert, 180, 181,
124–25, 128–29, 173–75 183–84
State-dependent memory systems, 23– The Watchtower, 130–32
24, 90, 94–95, 97, 110–12 Wesley, John, 91–92, 96–97, 154, 167
208 Index
Whitmer, Gary, 25–26 See also Speaking in tongues

Who I Am in Christ (Anderson). See (glossolalia)
Anderson, Rev. Neil T. Wordsworth, William, 21
Wiles, Maurice, 101
Wilson, Edward O., 139–43, 151 Xenolalia/xenoglossia, 181
Winnicott, D. W., 36, 65, 170, 172
Winston, Kimberly, 17 n.7 You Can’t Go Home Again (Wolfe), 130
Winward, Stephen F., 80 Young Man Luther (Erikson), 24
Wives, 64, 65
Wolfe, Thomas, 130 Zeb´-e-dee (New Testament), 13, 14
Word/language formation, 46–48, 56. Zwingli, Huldrych, 78
About the Author
M. D. FABER is Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature,
specializing in Literature and Psychology, at the University of Victoria, British
Columbia, Canada. Formerly Special Fellow at the National Institute of Mental
Health, Washington, D.C., Dr. Faber is the author of 10 books, including the
widely acclaimed volumes Synchronicity: C. G. Jung, Psychoanalysis, and Religion;
The Magic of Prayer: An Introduction to the Psychology of Faith; and The Psycho-
logical Roots of Religious Belief: Searching for Angels and the Parent-God.

(Faber) Becoming God's Children - Religion's Infantilizing Process

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BECOMING GOD’S CHILDREN

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What follows is the culmination of an inquiry undertaken some 15 years ago

I walk through the garden alone

she warbles softly to herself,

And the voice I hear

And then, savoring the famous refrain she liltingly renders,

And He walks with me

realm? When we further consider this rite in relation to baptism that is

Methods and Theses

of them at some length: baptism, prayer, the Eucharist, moment-to-moment

Seldom does the word Amen so transparently mean what it means in

most widely accepted version of its beginnings.14 Let’s take a moment to

If the doctrinal, ritualistic core of Christianity harbors a magical process

The Basic Biological Situation

it is physiologically dependent upon affect for its successful, efﬁcacious

Implicit Memory, State-Dependent Memory,

Dissociation, Infantile Amnesia, and Christianity

gradually emerging identity. The religious realm, in two words, corresponds

Trinity—these two perceptual realms, or worlds, now begin to touch and to

The Early Period

to the mother and to himself. At the emotional, preverbal level, he declares, in

that is to say, for a dose of maternal supplies—hugging, stroking, chatting—

attention by showing her the proverbial ‘‘cold shoulder.’’ At other times he

was dependent in each case on the history of the mother-child relationship, as

Thus, when we look at the whole picture, we spy an element of mystery, a

narrative, push upward ineluctably toward consciousness from an inward

if a six-month-old, when alone, encounters a rattle and manages to grasp it and

It is partly a ‘‘social response,’’ but in this instance it takes place in a ‘‘nonso-

Brain, Mind, and Religion

which such experiences of ‘‘attachment’’ mold ‘‘the developing mind.’’ In this

To express the whole business a tad more technically, ‘‘experience early in

Attractions and Addictions

its mother; it experiences a physical and psychological withdrawal from a host

More on Infantile Amnesia

(or explicit) memory. The distinction will lead us nicely to a number of

Johnston goes on,

To apply accurately an understanding of memory to an understanding of reli-

modes of processing information. . . . While there is no abrupt neurological

of purblind necromancers, from exotic tribal chiefs to lowly, credulous

Magic may be loosely deﬁned as an endeavor through utterance of set words,

Other parts which are commonly believed to remain in a sympathetic union

Again, ‘‘magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically not only through

destroying an image of him,’’ or, in the ‘‘amiable’’ sphere of ‘‘winning love,’’ an

appreciation that we internalize our experience during the early period.

to which religious conviction, or faith, is a species of the uncanny. God is real,

ever-imperfect wall of culture which he erects between himself and the . . .

be rooted in the child-mother situation,’’ he writes, ‘‘because in the beginning

Thus it is ‘‘obvious,’’ asserts Róheim, ‘‘that we grow up via magic.’’ We ‘‘pass

26. See Michael Basch, ‘‘Psychoanalytical Interpretation and Cognitive Transfor-

baptized, writes Anderson, he is ‘‘separate from God’’ and ‘‘spiritually dead.’’

As I noted toward this book’s beginning, Jesus is not playing symbolical

Prayer and Faith

nineteenth century, observes in one of his sermons: ‘‘to be religious and to

dependence’’ is the ‘‘universal feeling’’ that ‘‘animates’’ the whole of human-

Toward the Nature of the Holy Spirit

When prayer—the communion between human person and divine person—

interaction. To adopt the infantile model is to reexperience psychologically

praying subjects; ‘‘He fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness

Ah, show me that happiest place,

’Tis there I would always abide

Concealed in the cleft of Thy side,

wished it to do in the devotional poem with which I opened this section.